•V. ) ^ ^^ 



Tolstoy on Shakespeare 



I 



Tolstoy on Shakespeare 

A critical Essay on Shakespeare 



By 

LEO TOLSTOY 



Translated by V. Tchertkoff and I. F. M. 

Followed by 

Shakespeare's Attitude to the Working Classes 

By 

ERNEST CROSBY 

And a Letter From 

G. BERNARD SHAW 



NEW YORK ^ LONDON 

FUNK ^ WAGNALLS COMPANY 

1906 



^i* 



This Volume is issued by arrangement ivith V. Tchertkoff, sole 
literary representati-ve of Leo Tolstoy outside Russia, and 
Editor of '* The Free Age Press,' ^ Christchurch, Hants. 



NO RIGHTS RKSKRVED 



Published, Noveml'er, Jgo6 



Gift 
f Ap '07 ' 



/ ■ / : < 






CONTENTS 

PART I 

Tolstoy on Shakespeare 1 

PART II 

Appendix 

Shakespeare's Attitude toward the 
Working Classes, by Ernest Crosby, 127 

Letter from Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, . 166 



t? 



PART I 

TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 



Mr. Crosby's article^ on Shakespeare's 
attitude toward the working classes suggested 
to me the idea of also expressing my own long- 
established opinion about the works of Shake- 
speare, in direct opposition, as it is, to that 
established in all the whole European world. 
Calling to mind all the struggle of doubt and 
self-deceit, — efforts to attune myself to Shake- 
speare — which I went through owing to my 
complete disagreement with this universal 
adulation, and, presuming that many have 
experienced and are experiencing the same, I 
think that it may not be unprofitable to ex- 
press definitely and frankly this view of mine, 
opposed to that of the majority, and the more 
so as the conclusions to which I came, when 
examining the causes of my disagreement 

^ This essay owes its origin to Leo Tolstoy's desire 
to contribute a preface to the article he here men- 
tions by Ernest Crosby, which latter follows in this vol- 
ume.— (jTmns.) 

8 



4 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

with the universally established opinion, are, 
it seems to me, not without interest and sig- 
nificance. 

My disagreement with the established opinion 
about Shakespeare is not the result of an acci- 
dental frame of mind, nor of a light-minded 
attitude toward the matter, but is the outcome 
of many years' repeated and insistent en- 
deavors to harmonize my own views of Shake- 
speare with those established amongst all 
civilized men of the Christian world. 

I remember the astonishment I felt when I 
first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive 
a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, 
one after the other, works regarded as his best : 
"King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" 
and " Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, 
but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, 
and doubted as to whether I was senseless in 
feeling works regarded as the summit of per- 
fection by the whole of the civilized world to 
be trivial and positively bad, or whether the 
significance which this civilized world attrib- 
utes to the works of Shakespeare was itself 
senseless. My consternation was increased 
by the fact that I always keenly felt the beauties 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 5 

of poetry in every form; then why should 
artistic works recognized by the whole world 
as those of a genius, — the works of Shake- 
speare, — not only fail to please me, but be 
disagreeable to me ? For a long time I could 
not believe in myself, and during fifty years, 
in order to test myself, I several times recom- 
menced reading Shakespeare in every possible 
form, in Russian, in English, in German and 
in Schlegel's translation, as I was advised. 
Several times I read the dramas and the come- 
dies and historical plays, and I invariably 
underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weari- 
ness, and bewilderment. At the present time, 
before writing this preface, being desirous 
once more to test myself, I have, as an old man 
of seventy-five, again read the whole of Shake- 
speare, including the historical plays, the 
"Henrys," ''Troilus and Cressida," the "Tem- 
pest," " Cymbeline," and I have felt, with even 
greater force, the same feelings, — this time, 
however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, 
indubitable conviction that the unquestionable 
glory of a great genius which Shakespeare 
enjoys, and which compels writers of our time 
to imitate him and readers and spectators to 



6 TOT.STOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

discover in him non-exislent merits, — thereby 
distorting their esthetic and ethical under- 
standing, — is a great evil, as is every untruth. 

Altho I know that the majority of people so 
firmly believe in the greatness of Shakespeare 
that in reading this judgment of mine they 
will not admit even the possibility of its justice, 
and will not give it the slightest attention, 
nevertheless I will endeavor, as well as I can, 
to show why I believe that Shakespeare can 
not be recognized either as a great genius, or 
even as an average author. 

For illustration of my purpose I will take one 
of Shakespeare's most extolled dramas, " King 
Lear," in the enthusiastic praise of which, the 
majority of critics agree. 

"The tragedy of Lear is deservedly cele- 
brated among the dramas of Shakespeare," 
says Dr. Johnson. "There is perhaps no 
play which keeps the attention so strongly 
fixed, which so much agitates our passions, 
and interests our curiosity." 

" We wish that we could pass this play over 
and say nothing about it," says Hazlitt, "all 
that we can say must fall far short of the sub- 
ject, or even of what we ourselves conceive of 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 7 

it. To attempt to give a description of th6 
play itself, or of its effects upon the mind, is 
mere impertinence ; yet we must say something. 
It is, then, the best of Shakespeare's plays, for 
it is the one in which he was the most in earnest.'* 

'*If the originality of invention did not so 
much stamp almost every play of Shakespeare," 
says Hallam, "that to name one as the most 
original seems a disparagement to others, we 
might say that this great prerogative of genius, 
was exercised above all in "Lear." It diverges 
more from the model of regular tragedy than 
"Macbeth," or "Othello," and even more 
than "Hamlet," but the fable is better con- 
structed than in the last of these and it displays 
full as much of the almost superhuman in- 
spiration of the poet as the other two." 

" ' King Lear ' may be recognized as the per- 
fect model of the dramatic art of the whole 
world," says Shelley. 

"I am not minded to say much of Shake- 
speare's Arthur," says Swinburne. "There 
are one or two figures in the world of his work 
of which there are no words that would be fit 
or good to say. Another of these is Cordelia. 
The place they have in our lives and thoughts 



8 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

is not one for talk. The niche set apart for 
them to inhabit in our secret hearts is not 
penetrable by the lights and noises of common 
day. There are chapels in the cathedrals of 
man's highest art, as in that of his inmost life, 
not made to be set open to the eyes and feet 
of the world. Love, and Death, and Memory, 
keep charge for us in silence of some beloved 
names. It is the crowning glory of genius, 
the final miracle and transcendent gift of poetry, 
that it can add to the number of these and en- 
grave on the very heart of our remembrance 
fresh names and memories of its own crea- 
tion." 

"Lear is the occasion for Cordelia," says 
Victor Hugo. "Maternity of the daughter 
toward the father; profound subject; mater- 
nity venerable among all other maternities, 
so admirably rendered by the legend of that 
Roman girl, who, in the depths of a prison, 
nurses her old father. The young breast near 
the white beard! There is not a spectacle 
more holy. This filial breast is Cordelia. 
Once this figure dreamed of and found, Shake- 
speare created his drama. . . . Shakespeare, 
carrying Cordelia in his thoughts, created that 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 9 

tragedy like a god who, having an aurora to 
put forward, makes a world expressly for it.'* 

" In 'King Lear,' Shakespeare's vision sound- 
ed the abyss of horror to its very depths, 
and his spirit showed neither fear, nor giddiness, 
nor faintness, at the sight, saysBrandes." "On 
the threshold of this work, a feeling of awe 
comes over one, as on the threshold of the 
Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling of frescoes by 
Michael Angelo, — only that the suffering here 
is far more intense, the wail wilder, and the 
harmonies of beauty more definitely shattered 
by the discords of despair." 

Such are the judgments of the critics about 
this drama, and therefore I believe I am not 
wrong in selecting it as a type of Shakespeare's 
best. 

As impartially as possible, I will endeavor 
to describe the contents of the drama, and then 
to show why it is not that acme of perfection 
it is represented to be by critics, but is some- 
thing quite diflFerent. 



II 



The drama of " Lear '* begins with a scene 
giving the conversation between two courtiers, 
Kent and Gloucester. Kent, pointing to a 
young man present, asks Gloucester whether 
that is not his son. Gloucester says that he 
has often blushed to acknowledge the young 
man as his son, but has now ceased doing s'" 
Kent says he "can not conceive him." Th^ 
Gloucester in the presence of this son of h 
says: "The fellow's mother could, and gre' 
round-wombed, and had a son for her crad? 
ere she had a husband for her bed." " I ha 
another, a legitimate son," continues Glouces 
ter, "but altho this one came into the work 
before he was sent for, his mother was fair 
and there was good sport at his making, and 
therefore I acknowledge this one also." 

Such is the introduction. Not to mention 
the coarseness of these words of Gloucester, 
they are, farther, out of place in the mouth of s^ 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 11 

person intended to represent a noble character. 
One can not agree with the opinion of some 
critics that these words are given to Gloucester 
in order to show the contempt for his illegiti- 
macy from which Edmund suffers. Were 
this so, it would first have been unnecessary 
to make the father express the contempt felt 
by men in general, and, secondly, Edmund, in 
his monolog about the injustice of those 
who despise him for his birth, would have 
mentioned such words from his father. But 
this is not so, and therefore these words of 
Gloucester at the very beginning of the piece, 
•e merely intended as a communication 
the public — in a humorous form — of the 
t that Gloucester has a legitimate son and 
illegitimate one. 

Vfter this, trumpets are blown, and King 

-car enters with his daughters and sons-in- 

HW, and utters a speech to the effect that, owing 

to old age, he wishes to retire from the cares 

of business and divide his kingdom between 

his daughters. In order to know how much 

oe should give to each daughter, he announces 

hat to the one who says she loves him most 

he will give most, The eldest daughter, 



12 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

Goneril, says that words can not express the 
extent of her love, that she loves her father 
more than eyesight, space, and liberty, loves 
him so much that it *' makes her breath poor." 
King Lear immediately allots his daughter 
on the map, her portion of fields, woods, rivers, 
and meadows, and asks the same question of 
the second daughter. The second daughter, 
Regan, says that her sister has correctly ex- 
pressed her own feelings, only not strongly 
enough. She, Regan, loves her father so much 
that everything is abhorrent to her except his 
love. The king rewards this daughter, also, 
and then asks his youngest, the favorite, in 
whom, according to his expression, are " inter- 
ess'd the vines of France and the milk of 
Burgundy," that is, whose hand is being 
claimed by the King of France and the Duke of 
Burgundy, — he asks Cordelia how she loves 
him. Cordelia, who personifies all the virtues, 
as the eldest two all the vices, says, quite out of 
place, as if on purpose to irritate her father, 
that altho she loves and honors him, and is 
grateful to him, yet if she marries, all her love 
will not belong to her father, but she will also 
love her husband. 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE IS 

\ 

Hearing these words, the King loses his 
temper, and curses this favorite daughter with 
the most dreadful and strange maledictions, 
saying, for instance, that he will henceforth 
love his daughter as little as he loves the man 
who devours his own children. 

"The barbarous Scythian, 
Or he that makes his generation messes 
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom 
Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved. 
As thou, my sometime daughter." 

The courtier, Kent, defends Cordelia, and 
desiring to appease the King, rebukes him for 
his injustice, and says reasonable things about 
the evil of flatten . Lear, unmoved by Kent, 
banishes him under pain of death, and calling 
I to him Cordelia's two suitors, the Duke of 
Burgundy and the King of France, proposes to 
them in turn to take Cordelia without dowry. 
The Duke of Burgundy frankly says that with- 
out dowry he will not take Cordelia, but the 
King of France takes her without dowry and 
leads her away. After this, the elder sisters, 
there and then entering into conversation, 
prepare to injure their father who had endowed 
them. Thus ends the first scene. 



14 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

Not to mention the pompous, characterless 
language of King Lear, the same in which all 
Shakespeare's Kings speak, the reader, oi 
spectator, can not conceive that a King, how 
ever old and stupid he may be, could believe 
the words of the vicious daughters, with whom 
he had passed his whole life, and not believe 
his favorite daughter, but curse and banish 
her; and therefore the spectator, or reader, ca 
not share the feelings of the persons partic^*- 
pating in this unnatural scene. 

The second scene opens with Edmunt, 
Gloucester's illegitimate son, soliloquizing an 
the injustice of men, who concede rights and 
respect to the legitimate son, but deprive the 
illegitimate son of them, and he determines to 
ruin Edgar, and to usurp his place. For this 
purpose, he forges a letter to himself as from 
Edgar, in which the latter expresses a desire 
to murder his father. Awaiting his father's 
approach, Edmund, as if against his will, 
shows him this letter, and the father imme- 
diately believes that his son Edgar, whom he 
tenderly loves, desires to kill him. The father 
goes away, Edgar enters and Edmund per- 
suades him that his father for some reason 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 15 

desires to kill him. Edgar immediately believes 
this and flees from his parent. 

The relations between Gloucester and his 
two sons, and the feelings of these characters 
are as unnatural as Lear's relation to his 
daughters, or even more so, and therefore it is 
still more difficult for the spectator to transport 
himself into the mental condition of Gloucester 
and his sons and sympathize with them, than 
it is to do so into that of Lear and his daughters. 

In the fourth scene, the banished Kent, so 
disguised that Lear does not recognize him, 
presents himself to Lear, who is already staying 
with Goneril. Lear asks who he is, to which 
Kent answers, one doesn't know why, in a tone 
quite inappropriate to his position: "A very 
honest-hearted fellow and as poor as the King." 
— " If thou be as poor for a subject as he is for 
a King, thou art poor enough — How old art 
thou.^" asks the King. "Not so young. Sir, 
to love a woman, etc. ^ nor so old to dote on her." 
To this the King says, " If I like thee no worse 
after dinner, I will not part from thee yet." 

These speeches follow neither from Lear's 
position, nor his relation to Kent, but are put 
into the mouths of Lear and Kent, evidently 



k/ 



16 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

because the author regards them as witty and 
amusing. 

Goneril's steward appears, and behav^es 
rudely to Lear, for which Kent knocks him 
down. The King, still not recognizing Kent, 
gives him money for this and takes him into 
his service. After this appears the fool, and 
thereupon begins a prolonged conversation 
between the fool and the King, utterly unsuited 
to the position and serving no purpose. Thus, 
for instance, the fool says, " Give me an egg 
and I'll give thee two crowns." The King 
asks, "What crowns shall they be.?"— "Why," 
says the fool, "after I have cut the egg i' the 
middle, and eat up the meat, the two crowns 
of the egg. When thou clovest thy crown i' 
the middle, and gavest away both parts, thou 
borest thine ass on thy back o'er the dirt : thou 
hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou 
gavest thy golden one away. If I speak like 
myself in this, let him be whipp'd that first 
finds it so." 

In this manner lengthy conversations go on 
calling forth in the spectator or reader that 
wearisome uneasiness which one experiences 
when listening to jokes which are not witty. 



I 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 17 

This conversation was interrupted by the 
approach of Goneril. She demands of her 
father that he should ■ diminish his retinue ; 
that he should be satisfied with fifty courtiers 
instead of a hundred. At this suggestion, 
Lear gets into a strange and unnatural rage, 
and asks: 

"Doth any here know me ? This is not Lear: 
Does Lear walk thus ? speak thus ? Where are 

his eyes ? 
Either his notion weakens, his discernings 
Are lethargied. Ha! 'tis not so. 
Who is it that can tell me who I am ?" 

And so forth. 

W^hile this goes on the fool does not cease to 
interpolate his humorless jokes. Goneril's 
husband then enters and wishes to appease 
Lear, but Lear curses Goneril, invoking for 
her either sterility or the birth of such an in- 
fant-monster as would return laughter and 
contempt for her motherly cares, and would 
thus show her all the horror and pain caused 
by a child's ingratitude. 

These words which express a genuine feeling, 
might have been touching had they stood alone. 
But they are lost among long and high-flown 
2 " 



18 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

speeches, which Lear keeps incessantly utter- 
ing quite inappropriately. He either invokes 
" blasts and fogs " upon the head of his daugh- 
ter, or desires his curse to "pierce every sense 
about her," or else appealing to his own eyes, 
says that should they weep, he will pluck them 
out and " cast them w^ith the waters that they 
lose to temper clay." And so on. 

After this, Lear sends Kent, whom he still 
fails to recognize, to his other daughter, and 
notwithstanding the despair he has just mani- 
fested, he talks with the fool, and elicits his 
jokes. The jokes continue to be mirthless 
and besides creating an unpleasant feeling, 
similar to shame, the usual effect of unsuccess- 
ful witticisms, they are also so drawn out as 
to be positively dull. Thus the fool asks the 
King whether he can tell why one's nose stands 
in the middle of one's face ? Lear says he 
can not. — 

"Why, to keep one's eyes of either side 's nose, 
that what a man can not smell out, he may spy out." 

"Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?" 
•"No." 

"Nor I either; but I can tell why a snail has a 
house." 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 19 

"Why? " 

"Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to 
his daughters and leave his horns without a case." 

" Be my horses ready?" 

"Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason 
why the seven stars are no more than seven is a 
pretty reason." 

"Because they are not eight?" 

"Yes, indeed: thou would'st make a good fool." 

And so on. 

After this lengthy scene, a gentleman enters 
and announces that the horses are ready. The 
fool says: 

"She that's a maid now, and laughs at my depart- 
ure, 
Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut 
shorter." 

The second part of the first scene of the 
second act begins by the villain Edmund per- 
suading his brother, v^^hen their father enters, 
to pretend that they are fighting with their 
swords. Edgar consents, altho it is utterly 
incomprehensible why he should do so. The 
father finds them fighting. Edgar flies and 
Edmund scratches his arm to draw blood and 



20 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

persuades his father that Edgar was working 
charms for the purpose of kilHng his father 
and had desired Edmund to help him, but that 
he, Edmund, had refused and that then Edgar 
flew at him and wounded his arm. Gloucester 
believes everything, curses Edgar and transfers 
all the rights of the elder and legitimate son 
to the illegitimate Edmund. The Duke, 
hearing of this, also rcAvards Edmund. 

In the second scene, in front of Gloucester's 
palace, Lear's new servant, Kent, still unrecog- 
nized by Lear, without any reason, begins to 
abuse Oswald, Goneril's steward, calling him, 
— " A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats ; 
a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, 
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; 
— the son and heir of a mongrel bitch." And 
so on. Then drawing his sword, he demands 
that Oswald should fight with him, saying that 
he will make a " sop o' the moonshine " of him, 
— words which no commentators can explain. 
When he is stopped, he continues to give vent 
to the strangset abuse, saying that a tailor made 
Oswald, as "a stone-cutter or a painter could 
not have made him so ill, tho they had been 
but two hours o' the trade ! " He further says 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 21 

that, if only leave be given him, he will "tread 
this unbolted villain into mortar and daub the 
wall of a Jakes with him." 

Thus Kent, whom nobody recognizes, altho 
both the King and the Duke of Cornwall, as 
well as Gloucester who is present, ought to 
know him well, continues to brawl, in the 
character of Lear's new servant, until he is 
taken and put in the stocks. 

The third scene takes place on a heath. 
Edgar, flying from the persecutions of his father, 
hides in a wood and tells the public what kind 
of lunatics exist there — beggars who go about 
naked, thrust wooden pricks and pins into their 
flesh, scream with wild voices and enforce 
charity, and says that he wishes to simulate 
such a lunatic in order to save himself from 
persecution. Having communicated this to 
the public, he retires. 

The fourth scene is again before Gloucester's 
castle. Enter Lear and the fool. Lear sees 
Kent in the stocks, and, still not recognizing 
him, is inflamed *with rage against those who 
dared so to insult his messenger, and calls for 
the Duke and Regan. The fool goes on with 
his jokes. 



22 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

Lear with difficulty restrains his ire. Enter 
the Duke and Regan. Lear complains cf 
Goneril but Regan justifies her sister. Lear 
curses Goneril, and, when Regan tells him he 
had better return to her sister, he is indignant 
and says : '* Ask her forgiveness ? " and falls 
down on his knees demonstrating how indecent 
it would be if he were abjectly to beg food and 
clothing as charity from his own daughter, 
and he curses Goneril with the strangest curses 
and asks who put his servant in the stocks. 
Before Regan can answer, Goneril arrive. 
Lear becomes yet more exasperated and again 
curses Goneril, but when he is told that it was 
the Duke himself who ordered the stocks, he 
does not say anything, because, at this moment, 
Regan tells him that she can not receive him 
now and that he had best return to Goneril, 
and that in a month's time she herself will 
receive him, with, however, not a hundred 
but fifty servants. Lear again curses Goneril 
and does not want to go to her, continuing to 
hope that Regan will accept him with the 
whole hundred servants. But Regan says 
she will receive him only with twenty-five and 
then Lear makes up his mind to go back i.) 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 23 

Goneril who admits fifty. But when Goneril 
says that even twenty-five are too many, Lear 
pours forth a long argument about the super- 
fluous and the needful being relative and says 
that if man is not allowed more than he needs, 
he is not to be distinguished from a beast. 
Lear, or rather the actor who plays Lear's 
part, adds that there is no need for a lady's 
finery, which does not keep her warm. After 
this he flies into a mad fury and says that to 
take vengeance on his daughters he will do 
something dreadful but that he will not weep, 
and so he departs. A storm begins. 

Such is the second act, full of unnatural 
events, and yet more unnatural speeches, not 
flowing from the position of the characters, — 
and finishing with a scene between Lear and his 
daughters which might have been powerful if 
it had not been permeated with the most 
absurdly foolish, unnatural speeches — which, 
moreover, have no relation to the subject, — 
put into the mouth of Lear. Lear's vacilla- 
tions between pride, anger, and the hope of his 
daughters* giving in, would be exceedingly 
touching if it were not spoilt by the verbose 
absurdities to which he gives vent, about being 



24 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

ready to divorce himself from Regan's dead 
mother, should Regan not be glad to receive 
him, — or about his calling down "fen suck'd 
frogs " which he invokes, upon the head of his 
daughter, or about the heavens being obliged 
to patronize old people because they themselves 
are old. 

The third act begins with thunder, light- 
ning, a storm of some special kind such as, 
according to the words of the characters in the 
piece, had never before taken place. On the 
heath, a gentleman tells Kent that Lear, ban- 
ished by his daughters from their homes, is 
running about the heath alone, tearing his hair 
and throwing it to the wind, and that none but 
the fool is with him. In return Kent tells the 
gentleman that the dukes have quarrelled, 
and that the French army has landed at Dover, 
and, having communicated this intelligence, he 
despatches the gentleman to Dover to meet 
Cordelia. 

The second scene of the third act also 
takes place on the heath, but in another part 
of it. Lear walks about the heath and says 
words which are meant to express his despair: 
he desires that the winds should blow so hard 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 25 

that they should crack their cheeks and that 
the rain should flood everything, that lightning 
should singe his white head, and the thunder 
flatten the world and destroy all germens " that 
make ungrateful man ! " The fool keeps utter- 
ing still more senseless words. Enter Kent. 
Lear says that for some reason during this storm 
all criminals shall be found out and convicted. 
Kent, still unrecognized by Lear, endeavors 
to persuade him to take refuge in a hovel. At 
this point the fool pronounces a prophecy in no 
wise related to the situation and they all depart. 

The third scene is again transferred to 
Gloucester's castle. Gloucester tells Edmund 
that the French King has already landed with 
his troops, and intends to help Lear. Learning 
this, Edmund decides to accuse his father of 
treason in order that he may get his heritage. 

The fourth scene is again on the heath in 
front of the hovel. Kent invites Lear into the 
hovel, but Lear answers that he has no reason 
to shelter himself from the tempest, that he 
does not feel it, having a tempest in his mind, 
called forth by the ingratitude of his daughters, 
which extinguishes all else. This true feeling, 
expressed in simple words, might elicit sym- 



26 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

pathy, but amidst the incessant, pompous raving 
it escapes one and loses its significance. 

The hovel into which Lear is led, turns out 
to be the same which Edgar has entered, dis- 
guised as a madman, i.e.y naked. Edgar comes 
out of the hovel, and, altho all have known 
him, no one recognizes him, — as no one recog- 
nizes Kent, — and Edgar, Lear, and the fool 
begin to say senseless things which continue 
with interruptions for many pages. In the 
middle of this scene, enter Gloucester, who also 
does not recognize either Kent or his son Edgar, 
and tells them how his son Edgar wanted to 
kill him. 

This scene is again cut short by another in 
Gloucester's castle, during which Edmund 
betrays his father and the Duke promises to 
avenge himself on Gloucester. Then the scene 
shifts back to Lear. Kent, Edgar, Gloucester, 
Lear, and the fool are at a farm and talking. 
Edgar says : " Frateretto calls me, and tells me 
Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness . . ." 
The fool says: "Tell me whether a madman 
be a gentleman or a yeoman ? " Lear, having 
lost his mind, says that the madman is a king'. 
The fool says no, the madman is the yeoman 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 27 

who has allowed his son to become a gentleman. 
Lear screams: "To have a thousand with red 
burning spirits. Come hissing in upon 'em," 
— while Edgar shrieks that the foul fiend bites 
his back. At this the fool remarks that one 
can not believe "in the tameness of a wolf, a 
horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath." 
Then Lear imagines he is judging his daughters. 
" Sit thou here, most learned justicer," says he, 
addressing the naked Edgar; "Thou, sapient 
sir, sit here. Now, you she foxes." To this 
Edgar says: "Look where he stands and 
glares! Wantest thou eyes at trial, madam?" 

"Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me, " 

while the fool sings : 

"Her boat hath a leak 
And she must not speak 
Why she dares not come over to thee." 

Edgar goes on in his own strain. Kent sug- 
gests that Lear should lie down, but Lear con- 
tinues his imaginary trial: "Bring in their 
evidence," he cries. "Thou robed man of 
justice, take thy place," he says to Edgar, 
"and thou" (to the fool) "his yoke-fellow of 
equity, bench by his side. You are o' the 
commission, sit you too," addressing Kent. 



28 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

"Purr, the cat is gray," shouts Edgar. 

"Arraign her first, 'tis Goneril," cries Lear. 
"I here take my oath before this honorable 
assembly, she kicked the poor king, her father.'* 

" Come hither, mistress. Is your name 
Goneril ? " says the fool, addressing the seat. 

"And here's another," cries Lear. "Stop 
her there! arms, arms, sword, fire! Corrup- 
tion in the place ! False justice, why hast thou 
let her 'scape ? " 

This raving terminates by Lear falling 
asleep and Gloucester persuading Kent, still 
without recognizing him, to carry Lear to 
Dover, and Kent and the fool carry off the King. 

The scene is transferred to Gloucester's 
castle. Gloucester himself is about to be 
accused of treason. He is brought forward 
and bound. The Duke of Cornwall plucks 
out one of his eyes and sets his foot on it. 
Regan says, "One side will mock another; 
the other too." The Duke wishes to pluck 
the other out also, but some servant, for some 
reason, suddenly takes Gloucester's part and 
wounds the Duke. Regan kills the servant, 
who, dying, says to Gloucester that he has 
"one eye left to see some mischief on him." 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 29 

The Duke says, " Lest it see more, prevent it," 
and he tears out Gloucester's other eye and 
throws it on the ground. Here Regan says 
that it was Edmund who betrayed his father 
and then Gloucester immediately understands 
that he has been deceived and that Edgar 
did not wish to kill him. 

Thus ends the third act. 

The fourth act is again on the heath. 
Edgar, still attired as a lunatic, soliloquizes 
in stilted terms about the instability of fortune 
and the advantages of a humble lot. Then 
there comes to him somehow into the very 
place on the heath where he is, his father, the 
blinded Gloucester, led by an old man. In 
that characteristic Shakespearean language, — 
the chief peculiarity of which is that the 
thoughts are bred either by the consonance or 
the contrasts of words, — Gloucester also speaks 
about the instability of fortune. He tells the 
old man who leads him to leave him, but the 
old man points out to him that he can not see 
his way. Gloucester says he has no way and 
therefore does not require eyes. And he argues 
about his having stumbled when he saw, and 
about defects often proving commodities. 



so TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

"Ah! dear son Edgar," he adds, "might I but 
live to see thee in my touch, I'd say I had eyes 
again." Edgar naked, and in the character 
of a lunatic, hearing this, still does not disclose 
himself to his father. He takes the place of 
the aged guide and talks with his father, who 
does not recognize his voice, but regards him 
as a wandering madman. Gloucester avails 
himself of the opportunity to deliver himself 
of a witticism : " 'Tis the times' plague when 
madmen lead the blind," and he insists on 
dismissing the old man, obviously not from 
motives which might be natural to Gloucester 
at that moment, but merely in order, when left 
alone with Edgar, to enact the later scene of 
the imaginary leaping from the cliff. 

Notwithstanding Edgar has just seen his 
blinded father, and has learnt that his father 
repents of having banished him, he puts in 
utterly unnecessary interjections which Shake- 
speare might know, having read them in Haro- 
net's book, but which Edgar had no means 
of becoming acquainted with, and above all, 
which it was quite unnatural for him to repeat 
in his present position. He says, " Five friends 
have been in poor Tom at once: of lust, as 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 31 

Obidient; Hobbididance, prince of dumbness; 
Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibber- 
tigibbet, of mopping and mowing; who since 
possesses chambermaids and waiting women." 
Hearing these words, Gloucester makes a 
present of his purse to Edgar, saying: 

*'That I am so wretched 
Makes thee the happier; heavens, deal so still, 
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man, 
That slaves your ordinance, that will not see 
Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly. 
So distribution should undo excess. 
And each man have enough." 

Having pronounced these strange words, 
the blind Gloucester requests Edgar to lead 
him to a certain cliff overhanging the sea, and 
they depart. 

The second scene of the fourth act takes 
place before the Duke of Albany's palace. 
Goneril is not only cruel, but also depraved. 
She despises her husband and discloses her 
love to the villain Edmund, who has inherited 
the title of his father Gloucester. Edmund 
leaves, and a conversation takes place between 
Goneril and her husband. The Duke of 
Albany, the only figure with human feelings, 



32 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

who had already previously been dissatisfied 
with his wife's treatment of her father, now 
resolutely takes Lear's side, but expresses his 
emotion in such words as to shake one's con- 
fidence in his feeling. He says that a bear 
would lick Lear's reverence, that if the heavens 
do not send their visible spirits to tame these 
vile offenses, humanity must prey on itself 
like monsters, etc. 

Goneril does not listen to him, and then he 
begins to abuse her: 

"See thyself, devil! 
Proper deformity seems not in the fiend 
So horrid as in woman." 

"O vain fool," says Goneril. "Thou changed 
and self-cover'd thing, for shame," continues 
the Duke: 

"Be-monster not thy feature. Were't xny fitness 
To let these hands obey my blood, 
They are apt enough to dislocate and tear 
Thy flesh and bones; howe'er thou art a fiend, 
A woman's shape doth shield thee." 

After this a messenger enters, and announces 
that the Duke of Cornwall, wounded by his 
servant whilst plucking out Gloucester's eyes, 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 03 

had died. Goneril is glad but already antici- 
pates with fear that Regan, now a widow, will 
deprive her of Edmund. Here the second 
scene ends. 

The third scene of the fourth act represents 
the French camp. From a conversation be- 
tween Kent and a gentleman, the reader or 
spectator learns that the King of France is not 
in the camp and that CoiJeli" has received 
a letter from Kent and is greatly grieved by 
what she has learned about her father. The 
gentleman says that her face reminded one of 
sunshine and rain. 

"Her smiles and tears 
Were like a better day; those happy smiles 
That play'd on her ripe lip seem'd not to know 
What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence, 
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd." 

And so forth. 

The gentleman says that Cordelia desires 
to see her father, but Kent says that Lear is 
ashamed of seeing this daughter whom he has 
treated so unkindly. 

In the fourth scene, Cordelia, talking with 
a physician, tells him that Lear has been seen, 
that he is quite mad, wearing on his head a 
3 



34 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

wreath of various weeds, that he is roaming 
about and that she has sent soldiers in search 
of him, adding that she desires all secret reme- 
dies to spring with her tears, and the like. 

She is informed that the forces of the Dukes 
are approaching, but she is concerned only 
about her father and departs. 

The fifth scene of the fourth act lies in 
Gloucester's castle. Regan is talking with 
Oswald, Goneril's steward, who is carrying a 
letter from Goneril to Edmund, and she an- 
nounces to him that she also loves Edmund 
and that, being a widow, it is better for her to 
marry him than for Goneril to do so, and she 
begs him to persuade her sister of this. Further 
she tells him that it was very unreasonable to 
blind Gloucester and yet leave him alive, and 
therefore advises Oswald, should he meet 
Gloucester, to kill him, promising him a great 
reward if he does this. 

In the sixth scene, Gloucester again appears 
with his still unrecognized son Edgar, who 
(now in the guise of a peasant) pretends to 
lead his father to the cliif . Gloucester is walk- 
ing along on level land but Edgar persuades 
him that they are with difficulty ascending a 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 35 

steep hill. Gloucester believes this. Edgar 
tells his father that the noise of the sea is heard ; 
Gloucester believes this also. Edgar stops on 
a level place and persuades his father that he 
has ascended the cliff and that in front of him 
lies a dreadful abyss, and leaves him alone. 
Gloucester, addressing the gods, says that he 
shakes off his affliction as he can bear it no 
longer, and that he does not condemn them — 
the gods. Having said this, he leaps on the 
level ground and falls, imagining that he has 
jumped off the cliff. On this occasion, Edgar, 
soliloquizing, gives vent to a yet more entangled 
utterance : 

"I know not how conceit may rob 
The treasury of life when life itself 
Yields to the theft; had he been where he thought. 
By this had thought been past." 

He approaches Gloucester, in the character of 
yet a different person, and expressing aston- 
ishment at the latter not being hurt by his fall 
from such a dreadful height. Gloucester be- 
lieves that he has fallen and prepares to die, 
but he feels that he is alive and begins to doubt 
that he has fallen from such a height. Then 
Edgar persuades him that he has indeed 



36 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

jumped from the dreadful height and tells him 
that the individual who had been with him at 
the top was the devil, as he had eyes like two 
full moons and a thousand noses and wavy 
horns. Gloucester believes this, and is per- 
suaded that his despair was the work of the 
devil, and therefore decides that he will hence- 
forth despair no more, but will quietly await 
death. Hereupon enters Lear, for some reason 
covered with wild-flowers. He has lost his 
senses and says things wilder than before. 
He speaks about coining, about the moon, 
gives some one a yard — then he cries that he 
sees a mouse, w^hich he wishes to entice by a 
piece of cheese. Then he suddenly demands 
the password from Edgar, and Edgar imme- 
diately answers him with the words "Sweet 
marjoram." Lear says, " Pass," and the blind 
Gloucester, who has not recognized either his 
son or Kent, recognizes the King's voice. 

Then the King, after his disconnected utter- 
ances, suddenly begins to speak ironically 
about flatterers, who agreed to all he said, 
" Ay, and no, too, was no good divinity," but, 
when he got into a storm without shelter, he 
saw all this was not true; and then goes on to 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 37 

say that as all creation addicts itself to adultery, 
and Gloucester's bastard son had treated his 
father more kindly than his daughters had 
treated him (altho Lear, according to the 
development of the drama, could not know how 
Edmund had treated Gloucester), therefore, 
let dissoluteness prosper, the more so as, being a 
King, he needs soldiers. He here addresses 
an imaginary hypocritically virtuous lady who 
acts the prude, whereas 

"The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't 
With a more riotous appetite. 
All women inherit the gods only to the girdle 
Beneath is all the fiend's" — 

and, saying this, Lear screams and spits from 
horror. This monolog is evidently meant 
to be addressed by the actor to the audience, 
and probably produces an effect on the stage, 
but it is utterly uncalled for in the mouth of 
Lear, equally with his words: "It smells of 
mortality," uttered while wiping his hand, as 
Gloucester expresses a desire to kiss it. Then 
Gloucester's blindness is referred to, which 
gives occasion for a play of words on eyes, 
about blind Cupid, at which Lear says to 
Gloucester, *'No eyes in your head, nor no 



38 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

money in your purse? Your eyes are in a 
heavy case, your purse in a light.'' Then 
Lear declaims a monolog on the unfairness of 
legal judgment, which is quite out of place in 
the mouth of the insane Lear. After this, 
enter a gentleman with attendants sent by 
Cordelia to fetch her father. Lear continues 
to act as a madman and runs away. The gen- 
tleman sent to fetch Lear, does not run after 
him, but lengthily describes to Edgar the 
position of the French and British armies. 
Oswald enters, and seeing Gloucester, and 
desiring to receive the reward promised by 
Regan, attacks him, but Edgar with his club 
kills Oswald, who, in dying, transmits to his 
murderer, Edgar, Goneril's letter to Edmund, 
the delivery of which would insure reward. 
In this letter Goneril promises to kill her 
husband and marry Edmund. Edgar drags 
out Oswald's body by the legs and then returns 
and leads his father away. 

The seventh scene of the fourth act takes 
place in a tent in the French camp. Lear is 
asleep on a bed. Enter Cordelia and Kent, 
still in disguise. Lear is awakened by the 
music, and, seeing Cordelia, does not believe 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 39 

she is a living being, thinks she is an appa- 
rition, does not beHeve that he himself is alive. 
Cordelia assures him that she is his daughter, 
and begs him to bless her. He falls on his 
knees before her, begs her pardon, acknowl- 
edges that he is as old and foolish, says he is 
ready to take poison, which he thinks she has 
probably prepared for him, as he is pevsuaded 
she mu«t hate him. ("For your sisters," he 
says, "have done me wrong: you have some 
cause, they have not.") Then he gradually 
comes to his senses and ceases to rave. His 
daughter suggests that he should take a walk. 
He consents and says: "You must bear with 
me. Pray you now forget and forgive: I am 
old and foolish." They depart. The gentle- 
man and Kent, remaining on the scene, hold 
a conversation which explains to the spectator 
that Edmund is at the head of the troops and 
that a battle must soon begin between Lear's 
defenders and his enemies. So the fourth 
act closes. 

In this fourth act, the scene between Lear 
and his daughter might have been touching 
if it had not been preceded in the course of the 
earlier acts by the tediously drawn out, monot- 



40 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

onous ravings of Lear, and if, moreover, this 
expression of his feehngs constituted the last 
scene. But the scene is not the last. 

In the fifth act, the former coldly pom- 
pous, artificial ravings of Lear go on again, 
destroying the impression which the previous 
scene might have produced. 

The first scene of the fifth act at first 
represents Edmund and Regan; the latter is 
jealous of her sister and makes an offer. Then 
come Goneril, her husband, and some soldiers. 
The Duke of Albany, altho pitying Lear, 
regards it as his duty to fight with the French 
who have invaded his country, and so he pre- 
pares for battle. 

Then Edgar enters, still disguised, and hands 
to the Duke of Albany the letter he had received 
from Goneril's dying steward, and tells him 
if he gains the victory to sound the trumpet, 
saying that he can produce a champion who 
will confirm the contents of the letter. 

In the second scene, Edgar enters leading 
his father Gloucester, seats him by a tree, and 
goes away himself. The noise of battle 
is heard, Edgar runs back and says that the 
battle is lost and Lear and Cordelia are pris- 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 41 

oners. Gloucester again falls into despair. 
Edgar, still without disclosing himself to his 
father, counsels endurance, and Gloucester 
immediately agrees with him. 

The third scene opens with a triumphal 
progress of the victor Edmund. Lear and 
Cordelia are prisoners. Lear, altho no longer 
insane, continues to utter the same senseless, 
inappropriate words, as, for example, that in 
prison he will sing with Cordelia, she will ask 
his blessing, and he will kneel down (this 
process of kneeling down is repeated three 
times) and will ask her forgiveness. And he 
further says that, while they are living in prison, 
they will wear out "packs and sects of great 
ones " ; that he and Cordelia are sacrifices upon 
which the gods will throw incense, and that he 
that parts them "shall bring a brand from 
heaven and fire them like foxes; that he will 
not weep, and that the plague shall sooner 
devour his eyes, flesh and fell, than they shall 
make them weep." 

Edmund orders Lear and his daughter to 
be led away to prison, and, having called the 
officer to do this, says he requires another 
duty and asks him whether he'll do it? The 



42 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

captain says he can not draw a cart nor eat 
dried oats, but if it be men's work he can do 
it. Enter the Duke of Albany, Goneril, and 
Regan. The Duke of Albany wishes to cham- 
pion Lear, but Edmund does not allow it. 
The daughters take part in the dialog and 
begin to abuse each other, being jealous of 
Edmund. Here everything becomes so con- 
fused that it is difficult to follow the action. 
The Duke of Albany wishes to arrest Edmund, 
and tells Regan that Edmund has long ago 
entered into guilty relations with his wife, and 
that, therefore, Regan must give up her claims 
on Edmund, and if she wishes to marry, should 
marry him, the Duke of Albany. 

Having said this, the Duke of Albany calls 
Edmund, orders the trumpet to be sounded, 
saying that, if no one appears, he will fight him 
himself. 

Here Regan, whom Goneril has evidently 
poisoned, falls deadly sick. Trumpets are 
sounded and Edgar enters with a vizor conceal- 
ing his face, and, without giving his name, 
challenges Edmund. Edgar abuses Edmund; 
Edmund throws all the abuses back on Edgar's 
head. They fight and Edmund falls. Goneril 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 43 

is in despair. The Duke of Albany shows Gon- 
eril her letter. Goneril departs. 

The dying Edmund discovers that his op- 
ponent was his brother. Edgar raises his vizor 
and pronounces a moral lesson to the effect 
that, having begotten his illegitimate son 
Edmund, the father has paid for it with his 
eyesight. After this Edgar tells the Duke of 
Albany his adventures and how he has only 
just now, before entering on the recent combat, 
disclosed everything to his father, and the 
father could not bear it and died from emotion. 
Edmund is not yet dead, and wants to know 
all that has taken place. 

Then Edgar relates that, while he was sit- 
ting over his father's body, a man came and 
closely embraced him, and, shouting as loudly 
as if he wished to burst heaven, threw himself 
on the body of Edgar's father, and told the 
most piteous tale about Lear and himself, and 
that while relating this the strings of life 
began to crack, but at this moment the trumpet 
sounded twice and Edgar left him " tranced " — 
and this was Kent. 

Edgar has hardly finished this narrative 
when a gentleman rushes in with a bloody 



44 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

knife, shouting " Help ! " In answer to the 
question, " Who is killed ? " the gentleman 
says that Goneril has been killed, having 
poisoned her sister, she has confessed it. 

Enters Kent, and at this moment the corpses 
of Goneril and Regan are brought in. Ed- 
mund here says that the sisters evidently loved 
him, as one has poisoned the other for his 
sake, and then slain herself. At the same time 
he confesses that he had given orders to kill 
Lear and to hang Cordelia in prison, and 
pretend that she had taken her own life; but 
now he wishes to prevent these deeds, and 
having said this he dies, and is carried away. 

After this enters Lear with the dead Cordelia 
in his arms, altho he is more than eighty years 
old and ill. Again begins Lear's awful ra- 
vings, at which one feels ashamed as at unsuc- 
cessful jokes. Lear demands that all should 
howl, and, alternately, believes that Cordelia 
is dead and that she is alive. 

"Had I your tongues and eyes," he says 
" I'd use them so that heaven's vault should 
crack." 

Then he says that he killed the slave who 
hanged Cordelia. Next he says that his eyes 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 45 

see badly, but at the same time he recognizes 
Kent whom all along he had not recognized. 

The Duke of Albany says that he will resign 
during the life of Lear and that he will reward 
Edffar and Kent and all who have been faithful 
to him. At this moment the news is brought 
that Edmund is dead, and Lear, continuing his 
ravings, begs that they will undo one of his 
buttons — the same request which he had made 
when roaming about the heath. He expresses 
his thanks for this, tells everyone to look at 
something, and thereupon dies. 

In conclusion, the Duke of ^Albany, having 
survived the others, says : 

"The weight of this sad time we must obey; 
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. 
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young 
Shall never see so much, nor live so long." 

All depart to the music of a dead march. 
Thus ends the fifth act and the drama. 



Ill 



Such is this celebrated drama. However 
absurd it may appear in my rendering (which 
I have endeavored to make as impartial as 
possible), I may confidently say that in the 
original it is yet more absurd. For any man 
of our time — if he were not under the hypnotic 
suggestion that this drama is the height of 
perfection — it would be enough to read it to 
its end (were he to have sufficient patience for 
this) to be convinced that far from being the 
height of perfection, it is a very bad, carelessly 
composed production, which, if it could have 
been of interest to a certain public at a certain 
time, can not evoke among us anything but 
aversion and weariness. Every reader of our 
time, who is free from the influence of sug- 
gestion, will also receive exactly the same 
impression from all the other extolled dramas 
of Shakespeare, not to mention the senseless, 
dramatized tales, "Pericles," "Twelfth Night." 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 47 

"The Tempest," "Cymbeline," "Troilus and 
Cressida." 

But such free-minded individuals, not inoc- 
ulated with Shakespeare-worship, are no longer 
to be found in our Christian society. Every 
man of our society and time, from the first 
period of his conscious life, has been inoculated 
with the idea that Shakespeare is a genius, a 
poet, and a dramatist, and that all his writings 
are the height of perfection. Yet, however 
hopeless it may seem, I will endeavor to de- 
monstrate in the selected drama — " King Lear " 
— all those faults equally characteristic also of 
all the other tragedies and comedies of Shake- 
speare, on account of which he not only is not 
representing a model of dramatic art, but does 
not satisfy the most elementary demands of 
art recognized by all. 

Dramatic art, according to the laws estab- 
lished by those very critics who extol Shake- 
speare, demands that the persons represented 
in the play should be, in consequence of actions 
proper to their characters, and owing to a 
natural course of events, placed in positions 
requiring them to struggle with the surrounding 
world to which they find themselves in oppo- 



48 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

sition, and in this struggle should display their 
inherent qualities. 

In "King Lear" the persons represented 
are indeed placed externally in opposition to 
the outward world, and they struggle with it. 
But their strife does not flow from the natural 
course of events nor from their own characters, 
but is quite arbitrarily established by the 
author, and therefore can not produce on the 
reader the illusion which represents the essen- 
tial condition of art. 

Lear has no necessity or motive for his 
abdication; also, having lived all his life with 
his daughters, has no reason to believe the 
words of the two elders and not the truthful 
statement of the youngest; yet upon this is 
built the whole tragedy of his position. 

Similarly unnatural is the subordinate action : 
the relation of Gloucester to his sons. The 
positions of Gloucester and Edgar flow from 
the circumstance that Gloucester, just like 
Lear, immediately believes the coarsest un- 
truth and does not even endeavor to inquire 
of his injured son whether what he is accused 
of be true, but at once curses and banishes him. 
The fact that Lear's relations with his daugh- 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 49 

ters are the same as those of Gloucester to his 
sons makes one feel yet more strongly that in 
both cases the relations are quite arbitrary, 
and do not flow from the characters nor the 
natural course of events. Equally unnatural, 
and obviously invented, is the fact that all 
through the tragedy Lear does not recognize 
his old courtier, Kent, and therefore the rela- 
tions between Lear and Kent fail to excite 
the sympathy of the reader or spectator. The 
same, in a yet greater degree, holds true of the 
position of Edgar, who, unrecognized by any 
one, leads his blind father and persuades him 
that he has leapt off a cliff, when in reality 
Gloucester jumps on level ground. 

These positions, into which the characters 
are placed quite arbitrarily, are so unnatural 
that the reader or spectator is unable not only 
to sympathize with their sufferings but even 
to be interested in what he reads or sees. 
This in the first place. 

Secondly, in this, as in the other dramas of 
Shakespeare, all the characters live, think, 
speak, and act quite unconformably with the 
given time and place. The action of "King 
Lear" takes place 800 years B.C., and yet the 
4 



50 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

characters are placed in conditions possible 
only in the Middle Ages : participating in the 
drama are kings, dukes, armies, and illegiti- 
mate children, and gentlemen, courtiers, doc- 
tors, farmers, oflficers, soldiers, and knights 
with vizors, etc. It is possible that such an- 
achronisms (with which Shakespeare's dramas 
abound) did not injure the possibility of 
illusion in the sixteenth century and the begin- 
ning of the seventeenth, but in our time it is 
no longer possible to follow with interest the 
development of events which one knows could 
not take place in the conditions which the au- 
thor describes in detail. The artificiality of 
the positions, not flowing from the natural 
course of events, or from the nature of the 
characters, and their want of conformity with 
time and space, is further increased by those 
coarse embellishments which are continually 
added by Shakespeare and intended to ap- 
pear particularly touching. The extraordinary 
storm during which King Lear roams about 
the heath, or the grass which for some reason 
he puts on his head — like Ophelia in "Hamlet" — 
or Edgar's attire, or the fool's speeches, or the 
appearance of the helmeted horseman, Edgar — 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 51 

all these effects not only fail to enhance the 
impression, but produce an opposite effect. 
" Man sieht die Absicht und man wird ver- 
stimmt," as Goethe says. It often happens 
that even during these obviously intentional 
efforts after effect, as, for instance, the dragging 
out by the legs of half a dozen corpses, with 
which all Shakespeare's tragedies terminate, 
instead of feeling fear and pity, one is tempted 
rather to laugh. 



IV 



But it is not enough that Shakespeare's 
characters are placed in tragic positions which 
are impossible, do not flow from the course of 
events, are inappropriate to time and space — 
these personages, besides this, act in a way 
which is out of keeping with their definite 
character, and is quite arbitrary. It is gen- 
erally asserted that in Shakespeare's dramas 
the characters are specially well expressed, 
that, notwithstanding their vividness, they are 
many-sided, hke those of living people; that, 
while exhibiting the characteristics of a given 
individual, they at the same time wear the 
features of man in general ; it is usual to say that 
the delineation of character in Shakespeare 
is the height of perfection. 

This is asserted with such confidence and 
repeated by all as indisputable truth; but 
however much I endeavored to find confirma- 
tion of this in Shakespeare's dramas, I always 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 53 

found the opposite. In reading any of Shake- 
speare's dramas whatever, I was, from the very 
first, instantly convinced that he was lacking 
in the most important, if not the only, means 
of portraying characters: individuality of lan- 
guage, i.e., the style of speech of every person 
being natural to his character. This is absent 
from Shakespeare. All his characters speak, 
not their own, but always one and the same 
Shakespearian, pretentious, and unnatural lan- 
guage, in which not only they could not speak, 
but in which no living man ever has spoken 
or does speak. 

No living men could or can say, as Lear 
says, that he would divorce his wife in the 
grave should Regan not receive him, or that the 
heavens would crack with shouting, or that the 
winds would burst, or that the wind wishes to 
blow the land into the sea, or that the curled 
waters wish to flood the shore, as the gentleman 
describes the storm, or that it is easier to bear 
one's grief and the soul leaps over many suffer- 
ings when grief finds fellowship, or that Lear 
has become childless while I am fatherless, 
as Edgar says, or use similar unnatural ex- 
pressions with which the speeches of all the 



54 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

characters in all Shakespeare's dramas over- 
flow. 

Again, it is not enough that all the characters 
speak in a way in which no living men ever 
did or could speak — they all suffer from a 
common intemperance of language. Those 
who are in love, who are preparing for death, 
who are fighting, who are dying, all alike speak 
much and unexpectedly about subjects utterly 
inappropriate to the occasion, being evidently 
guided rather by consonances and play of 
words than by thoughts. They speak all 
alike. Lear raves exactly as does Edgar when 
feigning madness. Both Kent and the fool 
speak alike. The words of one of the person- 
ages might be placed in the mouth of another, 
and by the character of the speech it would be 
impossible to distinguish who speaks. If 
there is a difference in the speech of Shake- 
speare's various characters, it lies merely in 
the different dialogs which are pronounced 
for these characters — again by Shakespeare 
and not by themselves. Thus Shakespeare 
always speaks for kings in one and the same 
inflated, empty language. Also in one and the 
same Shakespearian, artificially sentimental 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 55 

language speak all the women who are intended 
to be poetic: Juliet, Desdemona, Cordelia, 
Imogen, Marina. In the same way, also, it is 
Shakespeare alone who speaks for his villains : 
Richard, Edmund, lago, Macbeth, expressing 
for them those vicious feelings which villains 
never express. Yet more similar are the 
speeches of the madmen with their horrible 
words, and those of fools with their mirthless 
puns. So that in Shakespeare there is no lan- 
guage of living individuals — that language 
which in the drama is the chief means of setting 
forth character. If gesticulation be also a 
means of expressing character, as in ballets, 
this is only a secondary means. Moreover, 
if the characters speak at random and in a ran- 
dom way, and all in one and the same diction, 
as is the case in Shakespeare's work, then even 
the action of gesticulation is wasted. There- 
fore, whatever the blind panegyrists of Shake- 
speare may say, in Shakespeare there is no 
expression of character. Those personages 
who, in his dramas, stand out as characters, 
are characters borrowed by him from former 
works which have served as the foundation 
of his dramas, and they are mostly depicted, 



56 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

not by the dramatic method Avhich consists 
in making each person speak with his own 
diction, but in the epic method of one person 
describing the features of another. 

The perfection with which Shakespeare 
expresses character is asserted chiefly on the 
ground of the characters of Lear, Cordeha, 
x/ Othello, Desdemona, Falstaff, and Hamlet. 
But all these characters, as well as all the others, 
insteading of belonging to Shakespeare, are 
taken by him from dramas, chronicles, and 
romances anterior to him. All these charac- 
ters not only are not rendered more powerful 
by him, but, in most cases, they are weakened 
and spoilt. This is very striking in this drama 
of '*King Lear," which we are examining, 
taken by him from the drama "King Leir," 
by an unknown author. The characters of 
this drama, that of King Lear, and especially 
of Cordelia, not only were not created by 
Shakespeare, but have been strikingly weak- 
ened and deprived of force by him, as com- 
pared with their appearance in the older drama. 
In the older drama, Leir abdicates because, 
having become a widower, he thinks only of 
saving his soul. He asks his daughters as to 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 57 

their love for him — that, by means of a cer- 
tain device he has invented, he may retain 
his favorite daughter on his island. The 
elder daughters are betrothed, while the 
youngest does not wish to contract a loveless 
union with any of the neighboring suitors 
whom Leir proposes to her, and he is afraid 
that she may marry some distant potentate. 

The device which he has invented, as he 
informs his courtier, Perillus (Shakespeare's 
Kent), is this, that when Cordelia tells him 
that she loves him more than any one or as 
much as her elder sisters do, he will tell her 
that she must, in proof of her love, marry the 
prince he will indicate on his island. All 
these motives for Lear's conduct are absent 
in Shakespeare's play. Then, when, according 
to the old drama, Leir asks his daughters 
about their love for him, Cordelia does not say, 
as Shakespeare has it, that she will not give 
her father all her love, but will love her hus- 
band, too, should she marry — which is quite 
unnatural — but simply says that she can not 
express her love in words, but hopes that her 
actions will prove it. Goneril and Regan 
remark that Cordelia's answer is not an an- 



58 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

swer, and that the father can not meekly accept 
such indifference, so that what is wanting in 
Shakespeare — i.e., the explanation of Lear's 
anger which caused him to disinherit his young- 
est daughter, — exists in the old drama. Leir 
is annoyed by the failure of his scheme, and 
the poisonous words of his eldest daughters 
irritate him still more. After the division of 
the kingdom between the elder daughters, 
there follows in the older drama a scene be- 
tween Cordelia and the King of Gaul, setting 
forth, instead of the colorless Cordelia of 
Shakespeare, a very definite and attractive 
character of the truthful, tender, and self- 
sacrificing youngest daughter. While Cordelia, 
without grieving that she has been deprived 
of a portion of the heritage, sits sorrowing at 
having lost her father's love, and looking 
forward to earn her bread by her labor, there 
comes the King of Gaul, who, in the disguise 
of a pilgrim, desires to choose a bride from 
among Leir's daughters. He asks Cordelia 
why she is sad. She tells him the cause of her 
grief. The King of Gaul, still in the guise of 
a pilgrim, falls in love with her, and offers to 
arrange a marriage for her with the King of 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 59 

Gaul, but she says she will marry only a man 
whom she loves. Then the pilgrim, still dis- 
guised, offers her his hand and heart and 
Cordelia confesses she loves the pilgrim and 
consents to marry him, notwithstanding the 
poverty that awaits her. Then the pilgrim 
discloses to her that he it is who is the King of 
Gaul, and Cordelia marries him. Instead of 
this scene, Lear, according to Shakespeare, 
offers Cordelia's two suitors to take her without 
dowry, and one cynically refuses, while the 
other, one does not know why, accepts her. 
After this, in the old drama, as in Shake- 
speare's, Leir undergoes the insults of Goneril, 
into whose house he has removed, but he bears 
these insults in a very different way from that 
represented by Shakespeare : he feels that by 
his conduct toward Cordelia, he has deserved 
this, and humbly submits. As in Shake- 
speare's drama, so also in the older drama, the 
courtiers, Perillus — Kent — who had interceded 
for Cordelia and was therefore banished — 
comes to Leir and assures him of his love, 
but under no disguise, but simply as a faithful 
old servant who does not abandon his king 
in a moment of need. Leir tells him what, 



60 OLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

according to Shakespeare, he tells Cordelia in 
the last scene, that, if the daughters whom 
he has benefited hate him, a retainer to whom 
he has done no good can not love him. But 
Perillus — Kent — assures the King of his love 
toward him, and Leir, pacified, goes on to 
Regan. In the older drama there are no 
tempests nor tearing out of gray hairs, but there 
is the weakened and humbled old man, Leir, 
overpowered with grief, and banished by his 
other daughter also, who even wishes to kill 
him. Turned out by his elder daughters, 
Leir, according to the older drama, as a last 
resource, goes with Perillus to Cordelia. In- 
stead of the unnatural banishment of Lear 
during the tempest, and his roaming about the 
heath, Leir, with Perillus, in the older drama, 
during their journey to France, very natu- 
rally reach the last degree of destitution, sell 
their clothes in order to pay for their crossing 
over the sea, and, in the attire of fishermen, 
exhausted by cold and hunger, approach 
Cordelia's house. Here, again, instead of the 
unnatural combined ravings of the fool, Lear, 
and Edgar, as represented by Shakespeare, 
there follows in the older drama a natural 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 61 

scene of reunion between the daughter and the 
father. Cordeha — who, notwithstanding her 
happiness, has all the time been grieving about 
her father and praying to God to forgive her 
sisters who had done him so much wrong — 
meets her father in his extreme want, and wishes 
immediately to disclose herself to him, but her 
husband advises her not to do this, in order 
not to agitate her weak father. She accepts 
the counsel and takes Leir into her house 
without disclosing herself to him, and nurses 
him. Leir gradually revives, and then the 
daughter asks him who he is and how he lived 
formerly : 

"If from the first," says Leir, "I should relate the 
cause, 
I would make a heart of adamant to weep. 
And thou, poor soul, kind-hearted as thou art. 
Dost weep already, ere I do begin." 
Cordelia: "For God's love tell it, and when you 
have done 
I'll tell the reason why I weep so soon." 

And Leir relates all he has suffered from his 
elder daughters, and says that now he wishes 
to find shelter with the child who would be 
in the right even were she to condemn him to 



62 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

death. "If, however," he says, "she will 
receive me with love, it will be God's and her 
work, but not my merit." To this Cordelia 
says : *' Oh, I know for certain that thy daughter 
will lovingly receive thee." — "How canst thou 
know this without knowing her.^" says Leir. 
"I know," says Cordelia, "because not far 
from here, I had a father who acted toward 
me as badly as thou hast acted toward her, 
yet, if I were only to see his white head, I would 
creep to meet him on my knees." — "No, this 
can not be," says Leir, "for there are no chil- 
dren in the world so cruel as mine." — "Do 
not condemn all for the sins of some," says 
Cordelia, and falls on her knees. " Look here, 
dear father," she says, "look on me: I am thy 
loving daughter." The father recognizes her 
and says : " It is not for thee, but for me, to beg 
thy pardon on my knees for all my sins toward 
thee." 

Is there anything approaching this exquisite 
scene in Shakespeare's drama ? 

However strange this opinion may seem to 
worshipers of Shakespeare, yet the whole of 
this old drama is incomparably and in every 
respect superior to Shakespeare's adaptation. 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 63 

It is so, first, because it has not got the utterly 
superfluous characters of the villain Edmund 
and unlifelike Gloucester and Edgar, who 
only distract one's attention ; secondly because 
it has not got the completely false "effects" 
oi Lear running about the heath, his conver- 
ations with the fool, and all these impossible 
disguises, failures to recognize, and accumulated 
deaths; and, above all, because in this drama 
here is the simple, natural, and deeply touching 
character of Leir and the yet more touching 
md clearly defined character of Cordelia, 
Doth absent in Shakespeare. Therefore, there 
s in the older drama, instead of Shakespeare's 
ong-drawn scene of Lear's interview with 
"^ordelia and of Cordelia's unnecessary mur- 
ier, the exquisite scene of the interview be- 
ween Leir and Cordelia, unequaled by any 
n all Shakespeare's dramas. 

The old drama also terminates more nat- 
irally and more in accordance with the moral 
lemands of the spectator than does Shake- 
peare's, namely, by the King of the Gauls 
jonquering the husbands of the elder sisters, 
nd Cordelia, instead of being killed, restoring 
^eir to his former position. 



64 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE ^^ 

Thus it is in the drama we are examining, 
which Shakespeare has borrowed from the 
drama "King Leir." So it is also with Othello, 
taken from an Italian romance, the same also 
with the famous Hamlet. The same with An- 
tony, Brutus, Cleopatra, Shylock, Richard, and 
all Shakespeare's characters, all taken from 
some antecedent work. Shakespeare, while 
profiting by characters already given in pre- 
ceding dramas, or romances, chronicles, or, 
Plutarch's " Lives," not only fails to render them 
more truthful and vivid, as his eulogists affirm, 
but, on the contrary, always weakens them and 
often completely destroys them, as with Lear, 
compelling his characters to commit actions 
unnatural to them, and, above all, to utter 
speeches natural neither to them nor to any one 
whatever. Thus, in "Othello," altho that is, 
perhaps, I will not say the best, but the least 
bad and the least encumbered by pompous 
volubility, the characters of Othello, lago, 
Cassio, Emilia, according to Shakespeare, 
are much less natural and lifelike than in the 
Italian romance. Shakespeare's Othello suf- 
fers from epilepsy, of which he has an at- 
tack on the stage; moreover, in Shakespeare's 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 65 

version, Desdemona's murder is preceded by 
the strange vow of the kneehng Othello. 
Othello, according to Shakespeare, is a negro 
and not a Moor. All this is erratic, inflated, 
unnatural, and violates the unity of the charac- 
ter. All this is absent in the romance. In 
that romance the reasons for Othello's jealousy 
are represented more naturally than in Shake- 
speare. In the romance, Cassio, knowing whose 
the handkerchief is, goes to Desdemona to 
return it, but, approaching the back-door of 
Desdemona's house, sees Othello and flies 
from him. Othello perceives the escaping 
Cassio, and this, more than anything, con- 
firms his suspicions. Shakespeare has not 
got this, and yet this casual incident explains 
Othello's jealousy more than anything else. 
With Shakespeare, this jealousy is founded 
entirely on lago's persistent, successful machi- 
nations and treacherous words, which Othello 
blindly believes. Othello's monolog over the 
sleeping Desdemona, about his desiring her 
when killed to look as she is alive, about his 
going to love her even dead, and now wishing 
to smell her "balmy breath," etc., is utterly 
impossible. A man who is preparing for the 



66 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

murder of a beloved being, does not utter suchi 
phrases, still less after committing the murder: 
would he speak about the necessity of am 
eclipse of sun and moon, and of the globe 
yawning; nor can he, negro tho he may be, 
address devils, inviting them to burn him in hot 
sulphur and so forth. Lastly, however effec- 
tive may be the suicide, absent in the romance, 
it completely destroys the conception of his 
clearly defined character. If he indeed suf- 
fered from grief and remorse, he would not, 
intending to kill himself, pronounce phrases 
about his own services, about the pearl, and 
about his eyes dropping tears ''as fast as the 
Arabian trees their medicinal gum"; and je\ 
less about the Turk's beating an Italian anc 
how he, Othello, smote him — thus! So that 
notwithstanding the powerful expression oi 
emotion in Othello when, under the influence 
of lago's hints, jealousy rises in him, and again 
in his scenes with Desdemona, one's conception 
of Othello's character is constantly infringed 
by his false pathos and the unnatural speeches 
he pronounces. 

So it is with the chief character, Othello," 
but notwithstanding its alteration and the dis- ' 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 67 

advantageous features which it is made 
thereby to present in comparison with the 
character from which it was taken in the 
romance, this character still remains a char- 
acter, but all the other personages are com- 
pletely spoiled by Shakespeare. 

lago, according to Shakespeare, is an un- 
mitigated villain, deceiver, and thief, a robber 
who robs Roderigo and always succeeds even 
in his most impossible designs, and therefore 
is a person quite apart from real life. In 
Shakespeare, the motive of his villainy is, first, 
that Othello did not give him the post he 
desired; secondly, that he suspects Othello of 
an intrigue with his wife and, thirdly, that, 
as he says, he feels a strange kind of love for 
Desdemona. There are many motives, but 
they are all vague. Whereas in the romance 
there is but one simple and clear motive, lago's 
passionate love for Desdemona, transmitted 
into hatred toward her and Othello after she 
had preferred the Moor to him and resolutely 
repulsed him. Yet more unnatural is the 
utterly unnecessary Roderigo whom lago de- 
ceives and robs, promising him Desdemona's 
love, and whom he forces to fulfil all he com- 



68 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

mands: to intoxicate Cassio, provoke and 
then kill Cassio. Emilia, who says anything 
it may occur to the author to put into her 
mouth, has not even the slightest semblance 
of a live character. 

"But Falstaff, the wonderful Falstaff," 
Shakespeare's eulogists will say, "of him, at 
all events, one can not say that he is not a 
living character, or that, having been taken 
from the comedy of an unknown author, it 
has been weakened." 

Falstaff, like all Shakespeare's characters, 
was taken from a drama or comedy by an 
unknown author, written on a really living 
person, Sir John Oldcastle, who had been the 
friend of some duke. This Oldcastle had 
once been convicted of heresy, but had been 
saved by his friend the duke. But afterward 
he was condemned and burned at the stake 
for his religious beliefs, which did not conform 
with Catholicism. It was on this same Old- 
castle that an anonymous author, in order to 
please the Catholic public, wrote a comedy 
or drama, ridiculing this martyr for his faith 
and representing him as a good-for-nothing 
man, the boon companion of the duke, and it 



I 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 69 

is from this comedy that Shakespeare borrowed, 
not only the character of Falstaff, but also his 
own ironical attitude toward it. In Shake- 
speare's first works, when this character ap- 
peared, it was frankly called "Oldcastle," 
but later, in Elizabeth's time, when Protes- 
tantism again triumphed, it was awkward to 
bring out with mockery a martyr in the strife 
with Catholicism, and, besides, Oldcastle's 
relatives had protested, and Shakespeare ac- 
cordingly altered the name of Oldcastle to 
that of Falstaff, also a historical figure, known 
for having fled from the field of battle at 
Agincourt. 

Falstaff is, indeed, quite a natural and typical 
character; but then it is perhaps the only 
natural and typical character depicted by 
Shakespeare. And this character is natural 
and typical because, of all Shakespeare's char- 
acters, it alone speaks a language proper to 
itself. And it speaks thus because it speaks 
in that same Shakespearian language, full of 
mirthless jokes and unamusing puns which, 
being unnatural to all Shakespeare's other 
characters, is quite in harmony with the boast- 
ful, distorted, and depraved character of the 



70 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

drunken Falstaff. For this reason alone does 
this figure truly represent a definite character. 
Unfortunately, the artistic effect of this char- 
acter is spoilt by the fact that it is so repulsive 
by its gluttony, drunkenness, debauchery, ras- 
cality, deceit, and cowardice, that it is diffi- 
cult to share the feeling of gay humor with 
which the author treats it. Thus it is with 
Falstaff. 

But in none of Shakespeare's figures is his, 
I will not say incapacity to give, but utter 
indifference to giving, his personages a typical 
character so strikingly manifest as in Ham- 
let; and in connection with none of Shake- 
speare's w^orks do we see so strikingly displayed 
that blind w^orship of Shakespeare, that un- 
reasoning state of hypnotism owing to which 
the mere thought even is not admitted that 
any of Shakespeare's productions can be 
wanting in genius, or that any of the principal 
personages in his dramas can fail to be the 
expression of a new and deeply conceived char- 
acter. 

Shakespeare takes an old story, not bad in 
its way, relating : 

"Avec quelle ruse Amlette qui depuis fut 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 71 

Roy de Dannemarch, vengea la mort de son 
pere Horwendille, occis par Fengon son frere, 
et autre occurrence de son histoire," or a 
drama which was written on this theme fifteen 
years before him. On this subject he writes 
his own drama, introducing quite inappro- 
priately (as indeed he always does) into the 
mouth of the principal person all those thoughts 

I of his own which appeared to him worthy of 
attention. And putting into the mouth of his 
hero these thoughts: about life (the grave- 
digger), about death (To be or not to be) — 
the same which are expressed in his sixty- 
sixth sonnet — about the theater, about women. 

I He is utterly unconcerned as to the circum- 
stances under which these words are said, and 
it naturally turns out that the person expressing 

• all these thoughts is a mere phonograph of 
Shakespeare, without character, whose actions 
and words do not agree. 

I In the old legend, Hamlet's personality is 
quite comprehensible: he is indignant at his 
mother's and his uncle's deeds, and wishes 
to revenge himself upon them, but is afraid 
his uncle may kill him as he had killed 
his father. Therefore he simulates insanity, 



72 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

desiring to bide his time and observe all that 
goes on in the palace. Meanwhile, his uncle 
and mother, being afraid of him, wish to test 
whether he is feigning or is really mad, and 
send to him a girl whom he loves. He persists, 
then sees his mother in private, kills a courtier 
who was eavesdropping, and convicts his mother 
of her sin. Afterward he is sent to England, 
but intercepts letters and, returning from Eng- 
land, takes revenge of his enemies, burning 
them all. 

All this is comprehensible and flows from 
Hamlet's character and position. But Shake- 
speare, putting into Hamlet's mouth speeches 
which he himself wishes to express, and making 
him commit actions which are necessary to 
the author in order to produce scenic effects, 
destroys all that constitutes the character of 
Hamlet and of the legend. During the whole 
of the drama, Hamlet is doing, not what he 
would really wish to do, but what is necessary 
for the author's plan. One moment he is awe- 
struck at his father's ghost, another moment 
be begins to chaff it, calling it "old mole"; 
one moment he loves Ophelia, another moment 
he teases her, and so forth. There is no pos- 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 73 

sibility of finding any explanation whatever 
of Hamlet's actions or words, and therefore 
no possibility of attributing any character to 
him. 

But as it is recognized that Shakespeare the 
genius can not write anything bad, therefore 
learned people use all the powers of their minds 
to find extraordinary beauties in what is an 
obvious and crying failure, demonstrated with 
especial vividness in "Hamlet," where the prin- 
cipal figure has no character whatever. And 
lo! profound critics declare that in this drama, 
in the person of Hamlet, is expressed singu- 
larly powerful, perfectly novel, and deep per- 
sonality, existing in this person having no 
character; and that precisely in this absence 
of character consists the genius of creating a 
deeply conceived character. Having decided 
this, learned critics write volumes upon vol- 
umes, so that the praise and explanation of 
the greatness and importance of the represen- 
tation of the character of a man who has no 
character form in volume a library. It is 
true that some of the critics timidly express 
the idea that there is something strange in this 
figure, that Hamlet is an unsolved riddle, but 



74 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

no one has the courage to say (as in Hans 
Andersen's story) that the King is naked — 
i.e., that it is as clear as day that Shakespeare 
did not succeed and did not even wish to give 
any character to Hamlet, did not even under- 
stand that this was necessary. And learned 
critics continue to investigate and extol this 
puzzling production, which reminds one of the 
famous stone with an inscription v/hich Pick- 
wick found near a cottage doorstep, and which 
divided the scientific world into two hostile 
camps. 

So that neither do the characters of Lear nor 
Othello nor Falstaff nor yet Hamlet in any 
way confirm the existing opinion that Shake- 
speare's power consists in the delineation of 
character. 

If in Shakespeare's dramas one does meet 
figures having certain characteristic features, 
for the most part secondary figures, such as 
Polonius in "Hamlet" and Portia in "The 
Merchant of Venice," these few lifelike charac- 
ters among five hundred or more other sec- 
ondary figures, with the complete absence of 
character in the principal figures, do not at 
all prove that the merit of Shakespeare's 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 75 

dramas consists in the expression of char- 
acter. 

That a great talent for depicting character 
is attributed to Shakespeare arises from his 
actually possessing a peculiarity which, for 
superficial observers and in the play of good 
actors, may appear to be the capacity of de- 
picting character. This peculiarity consists 
in the capacity of representative scenes ex- 
pressing the play of emotion. However unnat- 
ural the positions may be in which he places 
his characters, however improper to them the 
language which he makes them speak, however 
featureless they are, the very play of emotion, 
its increase, and alteration, and the combination 
of many contrary feelings, as expressed cor- 
rectly and powerfully in some of Shakespeare's 
scenes, and in the play of good actors, evokes 
even, if only for a time, sympathy with the 
persons represented. Shakespeare, himself an 
actor, and an intelligent man, knew how to 
express by the means not only of speech, but 
of exclamation, gesture, and the repetition 
of words, states of mind and developments 
or changes of feeling taking place in the per- 
sons represented. So that, in many instances. 



76 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare's characters, instead of speaking, 
merely make an exclamation, or weep, or in 
the middle of a monolog, by means of gestures, 
demonstrate the pain of their position (just 
as Lear asks some one to unbutton him), or, in 
moments of great agitation, repeat a question 
several times, or several times demand the 
repetition of a word which has particularly 
struck them, as do Othello, Macduff, Cleo- 
patra, and others. Such clever methods of 
expressing the development of feeling, giving 
good actors the possibility of demonstrating 
their powers, were, and are, often mistaken by 
many critics for the expression of character. 
But however strongly the play of feeling may 
be expressed in one scene, a single scene can 
not give the character of a figure when this 
figure, after a correct exclamation or gesture, 
begins in a language not its own, at the author's 
arbitrary will, to volubly utter words which 
are neither necessary nor in harmony with its 
character. 



**Well, but the profound utterances and 
sayings expressed by Shakespeare's characters," 
Shakespeare's panegyrists will retort. "See 
Lear's monolog on punishment, Kent's speech 
about vengeance, or Edgar's about his former 
life, Gloucester's reflections on the instability 
of fortune, and, in other dramas, the famous 
monologs of Hamlet, Antony, and others." 

Thoughts and sayings may be appreciated, 
I will answer, in a prose work, in an essay, a 
collection of aphorisms, but not in an artistic 
dramatic production, the object of which is to 
elicit sympathy with that which is represented. 
Therefore the monologs and sayings of Shake- 
speare, even did they contain very many deep 
and new thoughts, which they do not, do not 
constitute the merits of an artistic, poetic pro- 
duction. On the contrary, these speeches, 
expressed in unnatural conditions, can only 
spoil artistic works. 



78 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

An artistic, poetic work, particularly a drama, , 
must first of all excite in the reader or spectator I 
the illusion that whatever the person repre- 
sented is living through, or experiencing, is 
lived through or experienced by himself. For 
this purpose it is as important for the drama- 
tist to know precisely what he should make 
his characters both do and say as what he should 
not make them say and do, so as not to destroy 
the illusion of the reader or spectator. Speeches, 
however eloquent and profound they may be, 
when put into the mouth of dramatic characters, 
if they be superfluous or unnatural to the 
position and character, destroy the chief con- 
dition of dramatic art — the illusion, owing to 
which the reader or spectator lives in the 
feelings of the persons represented. Without 
putting an end to the illusion, one may leave 
much unsaid — the reader or spectator will 
himself fill this up, and sometimes, owing to 
this, his illusion is even increased, but to say 
what is superfluous is the same as to overthrow 
a statue composed of separate pieces and there- 
by scatter them, or to take away the lamp 
from a magic lantern: the attention of the 
reader or spectator is distracted, the reader 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 79 

sees the author, the spectator sees the actor, 
the illusion disappears, and to restore it is 
sometimes impossible; therefore without the 
feeling of measure there can not be an artist, 
and especially a dramatist. 

Shakespeare is devoid of this feeling. His 
characters continually do and say what is not 
only unnatural to them, but utterly unneces- 
sary. I do not cite examples of this, because 
I believe that he who does not himself see this 
striking deficiency in all Shakespeare's dramas 
will not be persuaded by any examples and 
proofs. It is sufficient to read " King Lear," 
alone, with its insanity, murders, plucking out 
of eyes, Gloucester's jump, its poisonings, 
and wranglings — not to mention " Pericles," 
"Cymbeline," " The Winter's Tale," '' The 
Tempest" — to be convinced of this. Only a 
man devoid of the sense of measure and of taste 
could produce such types as "Titus Andronicus" 
or " Troilus and Cressida," or so mercilessly 
mutilate the old drama "King Leir." 

Gervinus endeavors to prove that Shake- 
speare possessed the feeling of beauty, " Schon- 
heit's sinn," but all Gervinus's proofs provo 
only that he himself, Gervinus, is complett ly 



80 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

destitute of it. In Shakespeare everything is 
exaggerated: the actions are exaggerated, so 
are their consequences, the speeches of the 
characters are exaggerated, and therefore at 
every step the possibihty of artistic impression 
is interfered with. Whatever people may say, 
however they may be enraptured by Shake- 
speare's works, whatever merits they may attrib- 
ute to them, it is perfectly certain that he was 
not an artist and that his works are not artistic 
productions. Without the sense of measure, 
there never was nor can be an artist, as without 
the feeling of rhythm there can not be a mu- 
sician. Shakespeare might have been what- 
ever you like, but he was not an artist. 

" But one should not forget the time at which 
Shakespeare wrote," say his admirers. *'It 
was a time of cruel and coarse habits, a time 
of the then fashionable euphemism, i.e., arti- 
ficial way of expressing oneself — a time of 
forms of life strange to us, and therefore, to 
judge about Shakespeare, one should have in 
view the time when he wrote. In Homer, as 
in Shakespeare, there is much which is strange 
to us, but this does not prevent us from appre- 
ciating the beauties of Homer," say these 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 81 

admirers. But in comparing Shakespeare with 
Homer, as does Gervinus, that infinite distance 
which separates true poetry from its semblance 
manifests itself with especial force. How- 
ever distant Homer is from us, we can, with- 
out the slightest effort, transport ourselves 
into the life he describes, and we can thus 
transport ourselves because, however alien to 
us may be the events Homer describes, he 
believes in what he says and speaks seriously, 
and therefore he never exaggerates, and the 
sense of measure never abandons him. This 
is the reason why, not to speak of the wonder- 
fully distinct, lifelike, and beautiful characters 
of Achilles, Hector, Priam, Odysseus, and the 
eternally touching scenes of Hector's leave- 
taking, of Priam's embassy, of Odysseus's 
return, and others — the whole of the "Iliad" 
and still more the '* Odyssey" are so humanly 
near to us that we feel as if we ourselves had 
lived, and are living, among its gods and 
heroes. Not so with Shak speare. From 
his first words, exaggeraton is seen: the ex- 
aggeration of events, the exaggeration of emo- 
tion, and the exaggeration of effects. One 
sees at once that he does not believe in what 
6 



82 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

he says, that it is of no necessity to him, that 
he invents the events he describes, and is indif- 
ferent to his characters — that he has conceived 
them only for the stage and therefore makes 
them do and say only what may strike his 
public; and therefore we do not believe either 
in the events, or in the actions, or in the suffer- 
ings of the characters. Nothing demonstrates 
so clearly the complete absence of esthetic 
feeling in Shakespeare as comparison between 
him and Homer. The works which we call 
the works of Homer are artistic, poetic, original 
works, lived through by the author or authors; 
whereas the works of Shakespeare — borrowed 
as they are, and, externally, like mosaics, ar- 
tificially fitted together piecemeal from bits 
invented for the occasion — have nothing what- 
ever in common with art and poetry. 



VI 



But, perhaps, the height of Shakespeare's 
conception of life is such that, tho he does not 
satisfy the esthetic demands, he discloses to us 
a view of life so new and important for men that, 
in consideration of its importance, all his fail- 
ures as an artist become imperceptible. So, 
indeed, say Shakespeare's admirers. Gervi- 
nus says distinctly that besides Shakespeare's 
significance in the sphere of dramatic poetry 
in which, according to his opinion, Shakespeare 
equals " Homer in the sphere of Epos, Shake- 
speare being the very greatest judge of the 
human soul, represents a teacher of most 
indisputable ethical authority and the most 
select leader in the world and in life." 

In what, then, consists this indisputable 
authority of the most select leader in the world 
and in life ? Gervinus devotes the conclud- 
ing chapter of his second volume, about fifty 
pages, to an explanation of this. 



84 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

The ethical authority of this supreme teacher 
of Hfe consists in the following: The starting 
point of Shakespeare's conception of life, 
says Gervinus, is that man is gifted with powers 
of activity, and therefore, first of all, according 
to Gervinus, Shakespeare regarded it as good 
and necessary for man that he should act 
(as if it were possible for a man not to act) : 

"Die thatkraftigen Manner, Fortinbras, 
Bolingbroke, Alcibiades, Octavius spielen hier 
die gegensatzlichen Rollen gegen die verschie- 
denen thatlosen; nicht ihre Charaktere ver- 
dienen ihnen Allen ihr Gliick und Gedeihen 
etwa durch eine grosse Ueberlegenheit ihrer 
Natur, sondern trotz ihrer geringeren Anlage 
stellt sich ihre Thatkraft an sich iiber die 
Unthiitigkeit der Anderen hinaus, gleichviel 
aus wie schoner Quelle diese Passivitat, aus wie 
schlechter jene Thatigkeit fliesse." 

I.e.y active people, like Fortinbras, Boling- 
broke, Alcibiades, Octavius, says Gervinus, 
are placed in contrast, by Shakespeare, with 
various characters who do not exhibit energetic 
activity. And happiness and success, accord- 
ing to Shakespeare, are attained by individuals 
possessing this active character, not at all owing 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 85 

to the superiority of their nature; on the con- 
trary, notwithstanding their inferior gifts, the 
capacity of activity itself always gives them 
the advantage over inactivity, quite independ- 
ent of any consideration whether the inactiv- 
ity of some persons flows from excellent im- 
pulses and the activity of others from bad ones. 
"Activity is good, inactivity is evil. Activity 
transforms evil into good," says Shakespeare, 
according to Gervinus. Shakespeare prefers 
the principle of Alexander (of Macedonia) to 
that of Diogenes, says Gervinus. In other 
words, he prefers death and murder due to 
ambition, to abstinence and wisdom. 

According to Gervinus, Shakespeare believes 
that humanity need not set up ideals, but that 
only healthy activity and the golden mean are 
necessary in everything. Indeed, Shakespeare 
is so penetrated by this conviction that, accord- 
ing to Gervinus 's assertion, he allows himself 
to deny even Christian morality, which makes 
exaggerated demands on human nature. 
Shakespeare, as we read, did not approve of 
hmits of duty exceeding the intentions of 
nature. He teaches the golden mean between 
heathen hatred to one's enemies and Christian 



86 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

love toward them (pp. 561, 562). How fur 
Shakespeare was penetrated with this funda- 
mental principle of reasonable moderation, 
says Gervinus, can be seen from the fact that 
he has the courage to express himself even 
against the Christian rules which prompt 
human nature to the excessive exertion of its 
powers. He did not admit that the limits of 
duties should exceed the biddings of Nature. 
Therefore he preached a reasonable mean nat- 
ural to man, between Christian and heathen 
precepts, of love toward one's enemies on the 
one hand, and hatred toward them on the other. 
That one may do too much good (exceed 
the reasonable limits of good) is convincingly 
proved by Shakespeare's words and examples. 
Thus excessive generosity ruins Timon, while 
Antonio's moderate generosity confers honor; 
normal ambition makes Henry V. great, whereas 
it ruins Percy, in whom it has risen too high; 
excessive virtue leads Angelo to destruction, 
and if, in those who surround him, excessive 
severity becomes harmful and can not prevent 
crime, on the other hand the divine element 
in man, even charity, if it be excessive, can 
create crime. 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 87 

Shakespeare taught, says Gervinus, that one 
may he too good. 

He teaches that morahty, hke pohtics, is a 
matter in which, owing to the complexity of 
circumstances and motives, one can not estab- 
hsh any principles (p. 563), and in this he agrees 
with Bacon and Aristotle — there are no posi- 
tive religious and moral laws which may create 
principles for correct moral conduct suitable 
for all cases. 

Gervinus most clearly expresses the whole of 
Shakespeare's moral theory by saying that 
Shakespeare does not write for those classes 
for whom definite religious principles and laws 
are suitable {i.e., for nine hundred and ninety- 
nine one-thousandths of men) but for the edu- 
cated : 

"There are classes of men whose moral- 
ity is best guarded by the positive precepts 
of religion and state law; to such persons 
Shakespeare's creations are inaccessible. They 
are comprehensible and accessible only to the 
educated, from whom one can expect that they 
should acquire the healthy tact of life and self- 
consciousness by means of which the innate 
guiding powers of conscience and reason, uni- 



88 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

ting with the will, lead us to the definite at- 
tainment of worthy aims in life. But even 
for such educated people, Shakespeare's teach- 
ing is not always without danger. The con- 
dition on which his teaching is quite harmless 
is that it should be accepted in all its com- 
pleteness, in all its parts, without any omission. 
Then it is not only without danger, but is the 
most clear and faultless and therefore the 
most worthy of confidence of all moral teach- 
ing" (p. 564). 

In order thus to accept all, one should under- 
stand that, according to his teaching, it is 
stupid and harmful for the individual to revolt 
against, or endeavor to overthrow, the lim- 
its of established religious and state forms. 
"Shakespeare," says Gervinus, "would abhor 
an independent and free individual who, with 
a powerful spirit, should struggle against all 
convention in politics and morality and over- 
step that union between religion and the State 
which has for thousands of years supported 
society. According to his views, the practical 
wisdom of men could not have a higher object 
than the introduction into society of the greatest 
spontaneity and freedom, but precisely because 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 89 

of this one should safeguard as sacred and 
irrefragable the natural laws of society — one 
should respect the existing order of things 
and, continually verifying it, inculcate its 
rational sides, not overlooking nature for the 
sake of culture, or vice versa'' (p. 566). Prop- 
erty, the family, the state, are sacred; but 
aspiration toward the recognition of the 
equality of men is insanity. Its realization 
would bring humanity to the greatest calami- 
ties. No one struggled more than Shakespeare 
against the privileges of rank and position, 
but could this freethinking man resign him- 
self to the privileges of the wealthy and edu- 
cated being destroyed in order to give room 
to the poor and ignorant ? How could a man 
who so eloquently attracts people toward hon- 
ors, permit that the very aspiration toward 
that which was great be crushed together with 
rank and distinction for services, and, with 
the destruction of all degrees, "the motives 
for all high undertakings be stifled"? Even 
if the attraction of honors and false power 
treacherously obtained were to cease, could 
the poet admit of the most dreadful of all vio- 
lence, that of the ignorant crowd ? He saw 



90 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

that, thanks to this equahty now preached, 
everything may pass into violence, and violence 
into arbitrary acts and thence into unchecked 
passion which will rend the world as the wolf 
does its prey, and in the end the world will 
swallow itself up. Even if this does not hap- 
pen with mankind when it attains equality— ^ 
if the love of nations and eternal peace prove not 
to be that impossible " nothing," as Alonso ex- 
pressed it in "The Tempest" — but if, on the 
contrary, the actual attainment of aspirations to- 
ward equality is possible, then the poet would 
deem that the old age and extinction of the 
world had approached, and that, therefore, for 
active individuals, it is not worth while to live 
(pp. 571, 572). 

Such is Shakespeare's view of life as demon- 
strated by his greatest exponent and admirer. 

Another of the most modern admirers of 
Shakespeare, George Brandes, further sets 
forth:' 

*'No one, of course, can conserve his life 
quite pure from evil, from deceit, and from the 
injury of others, but evil and deceit are not 

1 " Shakespeare and His Writings," by George 
Brandes. 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 91 

always vices, and even the evil caused to others, 
is not necessarily a vice: it is often merely a 
necessity, a legitimate weapon, a right. And 
indeed, Shakespeare always held that there are 
no unconditional prohibitions, nor uncondi- 
tional duties. For instance, he did not doubt 
Hamlet's right to kill the King, nor even 
his right to stab Polonius to death, and yet 
he could not restrain himself from an over- 
whelming feeling of indignation and repulsion 
when, looking around, he saw everywhere how 
incessantly the most elementary moral laws 
were being infringed. Now, in his mind there 
was formed, as it were, a closely riveted ring 
of thoughts concerning which he had always 
vaguely felt: such unconditional command- 
ments do not exist ; the quality and significance 
of an act, not to speak of a character, do not 
depend upon their enactment or infringement; 
the whole substance lies in the contents with 
which the separate individual, at the moment 
of his decision and on his own responsibility, 
fills up the form of these laws." 

In other words, Shakespeare at last clearly 
saw that the moral of the aim is the only true 
and possible one ; so that, according to Brandes, 



92 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare's fundamental principle, for which 
he extols him, is that the end justifies the means 
— action at all costs, the absence of all ideals, 
moderation in everything, the conservation of 
the forms of life once established, and the end 
justifying the means. If you add to this a 
Chauvinist English patriotism, expressed in all 
the historical dramas, a patriotism according 
to which the English throne is something sacred, 
Englishmen always vanquishing the French, kill- 
ing thousands and losing only scores, Joan of 
Arc regarded as a witch, and the belief that 
Hector and all the Trojans, from whom the 
English came, are heroes, while the Greeks 
are cowards and traitors, and so forth, — such 
is the view of life of the wisest teacher of life 
according to his greatest admirers. And he 
who will attentively read Shakespeare's works 
can not fail to recognize that the description 
of this Shakespearian view of life by his ad- 
mirers is quite correct. 

The merit of every poetic work depends on 
three things : 

(1) The subject of the work: the deeper the 
subject, i.e., the more important it is to the 
life of mankind, the higher is the work. 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 93 

(2) The external beauty achieved by tech- 
nical methods proper to the particular kind of 
art. Thus, in dramatic art, the technical 
method will be a true individuality of language, 
corresponding to the characters, a natural, and 
at the same time touching plot, a correct scenic 
rendering of the demonstration and develop- 
ment of emotion, and the feeling of measure 
in all that is represented. 

(3) Sincerity, i.e., that the author should 
himself keenly feel what he expresses. With- 
out this condition there can be no work of art, 
as the essence of art consists in the contempla- 
tion of the work of art being infected with the 
author's feeling. If the author does not ac- 
tually feel what he expresses, then the recip- 
ient can not become infected with the feeling 
of the author, does not experience any feeling, 
and the production can no longer be classified 
as a work of art. 

The subject of Shakespeare's pieces, as is 
seen from the demonstrations of his greatest 
admirers, is the lowest, most vulgar view of 
life, which regards the external elevation of 
the lords of the world as a genuine distinction, 
despises the crowd, i.e., the working classes — 



94 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

repudiates not only all religious, but also a 
humanitarian, strivings directed to the bettei 
ment of the existing order. 

The second condition also, with the exception 
of the rendering of the scenes in which the 
movement of feelings is expressed, is quite 
absent in Shakespeare. He does not grasp 
the natural character of the positions of his 
personages, nor the language of the persons 
represented, nor the feeling of measure without 
which no work can be artistic. 

The third and most important condition, 
sincerity, is completely absent in all Shake- 
speare's works. In all of them one sees inten- 
tional artifice; one sees that he is not in earnest^ 
but that he is playing with words. 



I 



VII 

Shakespeare's works do not satisfy the 
demands of all art, and, besides this, their 
tendency is of the lowest and most immoral. 
What then signifies the great fame these works 
have enjoyed for more than a hundred years ? 

Many times during my life I have had oc- 
casion to argue about Shakespeare with his 
admirers, not only with people little sensitive 
to poetry, but with those who keenly felt poetic 
beauty, such as Turgenef, Fet, ^ and others, 
and every time I encountered one and the same 
attitude toward my objection to the praises of 
Shakespeare. I was not refuted when I pointed 
out Shakespeare's defects ; they only condoled 
with me for my want of comprehension, and 
urged upon me the necessity of recognizing 
the extraordinary supernatural grandeur of 
Shakespeare, and they did not explain to me 

1 A Russian poet, remarkable for the delicacy of his 
works. 



96 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

in what the beauties of Shakespeare consisted, 
but were merely vaguely and exaggeratedly 
enraptured with the whole of Shakespeare, 
extolling some favorite passages : the unbutton- 
ing of Lear's button, Falstaff's lying. Lady 
Macbeth's ineffaceable spots, Hamlet's ex- 
hortation to his father's ghost, "forty thousand 
brothers," etc. 

"Open Shakespeare," I used to say to these 
admirers, "wherever you like, or wherever it 
may chance, you will see that you will never 
find ten consecutive lines which are compre- 
hensible, unartificial, natural to the character 
that says them, and which produce an artistic 
impression. (This experiment may be made by 
any one. And either at random, or according 
to their own choice.) Shakespeare's admirers 
opened pages in Shakespeare's dramas, and 
without paying any attention to my criticisms 
as to why the selected ten lines did not satisfy 
the most elementary demands of esthetic and 
common sense, they were enchanted with the 
very thing which to me appeared absurd, in- 
comprehensible, and inartistic. So that, in 
general, when I endeavored to get from Shake- 
speare's worshipers an explanation of his great- 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 97 

ness, I met in them exactly the same attitude 
which I have met, and which is usually met, 
in the defenders of any dogmas accepted not 
through reason, but through faith. It is this 
attitude of Shakespeare's admirers toward 
their object — an attitude which may be seen 
also in all the mistily indefinite essays and con- 
versations about Shakespeare — which gave me 
the key to the understanding of the cause of 
Shakespeare's fame. There is but one ex- 
planation of this wonderful fame: it is one of 
those epidemic " suggestions " to which men 
constantly have been and are subject. Such 
"suggestion" always has existed and does 
exist in the most varied spheres of life. As 
glaring instances, considerable in scope and 
in deceitful influence, one may cite the medieval 
Crusades which afflicted, not only adults, but 
even children, and the individual "sugges- 
tions," startling in their senselessness, such as 
faith in witches, in the utility of torture for the 
discovery of the truth, the search for the elixir 
of life, the philosopher's stone, or the passion 
for tulips valued at several thousand guldens 
a bulb which took hold of Holland. Such 
irrational " suggestions " always have been ex- 
7 



98 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

isting, and still exist, in all spheres of human i 
life — religious, philosophical, political, eco- 
nomical, scientific, artistic, and, in general, 
literary — and people clearly see the insanity of 
these suggestions only when they free them- 
selves from them. But, as long as they are 
under their influence, the suggestions appear 
to them so certain, so true, that to argue about 
them is regarded as neither necessary nor 
possible. With the development of the print- 
ing press, these epidemics became especially 
striking. 

With the development of the press, it has 
now come to pass that so soon as any event, 
owing to casual circumstances, receives an 
especially prominent significance, immediate- 
ly the organs of the press announce this sig- 
nificance. xAs soon as the press has brought 
forward the significance of the event, the pub- 
lic devotes more and more attention to it. 
The attention of the public prompts the press 
to examine the event with greater attention 
and in greater detail. The interest of the 
public further increases, and the organs of 
the press, competing with one another, satisfy 
the public demand. The public is still more 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 99 

interested; the press attributes yet more sig- 
nificance to the event. So that the importance 
of the event, continually growing, like a lump 
of snow, receives an appreciation utterly inap- 
propriate to its real significance, and this appre- 
ciation, often exaggerated to insanity, is retained 
so long as the conception of life of the leaders 
of the press and of the public remains the same. 
There are innumerable examples of such an 
inappropriate ectimation which, in our time, 
owing to the mutual influence of press and 
public on one another, is attached to the most 
insignificant subjects. A striking example of 
such mutual influence of the public and the 
press was the excitement in the case of Dreyfus, 
which lately caught hold of the whole world. 

The suspicion arose that some captain of 
the French staff was guilty of treason. Whether 
because this particular captain was a Jew, or 
because of some special internal party disagree- 
ments in French society, the press attached a 
somewhat prominent interest to this event, 
whose like is continually occurring without 
attracting any one's attention, and without 
being able to interest even the French military, 
still less the whole world. The public turned 

L Of C. 



100 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

its attention to this incident, the organs of the 
press, mutually competing, began to describe, 
examine, discuss the event; the public was yet 
more interested; the press answered to the 
demand of the public, and the lump of snow 
began to grow and grow, till before our eyes 
it attained such a bulk that there was not a 
family where controversies did not rage about 
"I'affaire." The caricature by Caran d'iVche 
representing at first a peaceful family resolved 
to talk no more about Dreyfus, and then, like 
exasperated furies, members of the same fam- 
ily fighting with each other, quite correctly 
expressed the attitude of the whole of the read- 
ing world to the question about Dreyfus. 
People of foreign nationalities, who could not 
be interested in the question whether a French 
officer was a traitor or not — people, moreover, 
who could know nothing of the development 
of the case — all divided themselves for and 
against Dreyfus, and the moment they met they 
talked and argued about Dreyfus, some asserting 
his guilt with assurance, others denying it with 
equal assurance. Only after the lapse of some 
years did people begin to awake from the 
"suggestion" and to understand that they 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 101 

could not possibly know whether Dreyfus was 
guilty or not, and that each one had thou- 
sands of subjects much more near to him and 
interesting than the case of Dreyfus. 

Such infatuations take place in all spheres, 
but they are especially noticeable in the sphere 
of literature, as the press naturally occupies 
itself the more keenly with the affairs of the 
press, and they are particularly powerful in 
our time when the press has received such an 
unnatural development. It continually hap- 
pens that people suddenly begin to extol some 
most insignificant works, in exaggerated lan- 
guage, and then, if theso works do not corre- 
spond to the prevailing view of life, they suddenly 
become utterly indifferent to them, and forget 
both the works themselves and their former 
attitude toward them. 

So within my recollection, in the forties, 
there was in the sphere of art the laudation and 
glorification of Eugene Sue, and Georges Sand; 
and in the social sphere Fourier; in the philo- 
sophical sphere, Comte and Hegel; in the scien- 
tific sphere, Darwin. 

Sue is quite forgotten, Georges Sand is be- 
ing forgotten and replaced by the writings of 



102 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

Zola and the Decadents, Beaudelaire, Verlaine, 
Maeterlinck, and others. Fourier with his 
phalansteries is quite forgotten, his place be- 
ing taken by Marx. Hegel, who justified the 
existing order, and Comte, who denied the 
necessity of religious activity in mankind, and 
Darwin with his law of struggle, still hold on, 
but are beginning to be forgotten, being re- 
placed by the teaching of Nietzsche, which, 
altho utterly extravagant, unconsidered, misty, 
and vicious in its bearing, yet corresponds 
better with existing tendencies. Thus some- 
times artistic, philosophic, and, in general, 
literary crazes suddenly arise and are as quick- 
ly forgotten. But it also happens that such 
crazes, having arisen in consequence of special 
reasons accidentally favoring to their estab- 
lishment, correspond in such a degree to the 
views of life spread in society, and especially 
in literary circles, that they are maintained for 
a long time. As far back as in the time of 
Rome, it was remarked that often books have 
their own very strange fates: consisting in 
failure notwithstanding their high merits, and 
in enormous undeserved success notwithstand- 
ing their triviality. The saying arose: "pro 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 103 

captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli " — i.e.^ 
that the fate of books depends on the under- 
standing of those who read them. There 
was harmony between Shakespeare's writings 
and the view of hfe of those amongst whom 
his fame arose. And this fame has been, and 
still is, maintained owing to Shakespeare's 
works continuing to correspond to the life 
concept of those who support this fame. 

Until the end of the eighteenth century 
Shakespeare not only failed to gain any special 
fame in England, but was valued less than his 
contemporary dramatists : Ben Jonson, Fletch- 
er, Beaumont, and others. His fame originated 
in Germany, and thence was transferred to 
England. This happened for the following 
reason : 

Art, especially dramatic art, demanding for 
its realization great preparations, outlays, and 
labor, was always religious, i.e., its object was 
to stimulate in men a clearer conception of 
that relation of man to God which had, at that 
time, been attained by the leading men of the 
circles interested in art. 

So it was bound to be from its own na- 
ture, and so, as a matter of fact, has it always 



104 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

been among all nations — Egyptians, Hindus, 
Chinese, Greeks — commencing in some remote 
period of human life. And it has always hap- 
pened that, with the coarsening of religious 
forms, art has more and more diverged from 
its original object (according to which it could 
be regarded as an important function — almost 
an act of worship), and, instead of serving 
religious objects, it strove for worldly aims, 
seeking to satisfy the demands of the crowd 
or of the powerful, i.e.y the aims of recreation 
and amusement. This deviation of art from 
its true and high vocation took place every- 
where, and even in connection Avith Chris- 
tianity. 

The first manifestations of Christian art 
were services in churches: in the adminis- 
tration of the sacraments and the ordinary 
liturgy. When, in course of time, the forms 
of art as used in worship became insufficient, 
there appeared the Mysteries, describing those 
events which were regarded as the most im- 
portant in the Christian religious view of life. 
When, in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
turies, the center of gravity of Christian teaching 
was more and more transferred, the worship 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 105 

of Christ as God, and the interpretation and 
following of His teaching, the form of Mys- 
teries describing external Christian events 
became insufficient, and new forms were 
demanded. As the expression of the aspira- 
tions which gave rise to these changes, there 
appeared the Moralities, dramatic represen- 
tations in which the characters were personifi- 
cations of Christian virtues and their opposite 
vices. 

But allegories, owing to the very fact of their 
being works of art of a lower order, could not 
replace the former religious dramas, and yet 
no new forms of dramatic art corresponding to 
the conception now entertained of Christianity, 
according to which it was regarded as a teach- 
ing of life, had yet been found. Hence, dra- 
matic art, having no foundation, came in all 
Christian countries to swerve farther and 
farther from its proper use and object, and, 
instead of serving God, it took to serving the 
crowd (by crowd, I mean, not simply the masses 
of common people, but the majority of immoral 
or unmoral men, indifferent to the higher 
problems of human life). This deviation was, 
moreover, encouraged by the circumstance 



106 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

that, at this very time, the Greek thinkers, 
poets, and dramatists, hitherto unknown in the 
Christian world, were discovered and brought 
back into favor. From all this it followed that, 
not having yet had time to work out their own 
form of dramatic art corresponding to the new 
conception entertained of Christianity as being 
a teaching of life, and, at the same time, rec- 
ognizing the previous form of Mysteries and 
Moralities as insufficient, the writers of the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in their search 
for a new form, began to imitate the newly 
discovered Greek models, attracted by their 
elegance and novelty. 

Since those who could principally avail 
themselves of dramatic representations were 
the powerful of this world: kings, princes, 
courtiers, the least religious people, not only 
utterly indifferent to the questions of religion, 
but in most cases completely depraved — 
therefore, in satisfying the demands of its 
audience, the drama of the fifteenth and six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries entirely gave 
up all religious aim. It came to pass that the 
drama, which formerly had such a lofty and 
religious significance, and which can, on this 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 107 

condition alone, occupy an important place 
in human life, became, as in the time of Rome, 
a spectacle, an amusement, a recreation — 
only with this difference, that in Rome the 
spectacles existed for the whole people, whereas 
in the Christian world of the fifteenth, six- 
teenth, and seventeenth centuries they were 
principally meant for depraved kings and the 
higher classes. Such was the case with the 
Spanish, English, Italian, and French drama. 

The dramas of that time, principally com- 
posed, in all these countries, according to 
ancient Greek models, or taken from poems, 
legends, or biographies, naturally reflected 
the characteristics of their respective nation- 
alities: in Italy comedies were chiefly elab- 
orated, with humorous positions and persons. 
In Spain there flourished the worldly drama, 
with complicated plots and historical heroes. 
The peculiarities of the English drama were 
the coarse incidents of murders, executions, and 
battles taking place on the stage, and popular, 
humorous interludes. Neither the Italian nor 
the Spanish nor the English drama had Euro- 
pean fame, but they all enjoyed success in 
their own countries. General fame, owing to 



l08 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

the elegance of its language and the talent of 
its writers, was possessed only by the French 
drama, distinguished by its strict adherence 
to the Greek models, and especially to the law 
of the three Unities. 

So it continued till the end of the eighteenth 
century, at which time this happened : In Ger- 
many, which had not produced even passable 
dramatic writers (there was a weak and little 
known writer, Hans Sachs), all educated peo- 
ple, together with Frederick the Great, bowed 
down before the French pseudo-classical drama. 
Yet at this very time there appeared in Germany 
a group of educated and talented writers and 
poets, who, feeling the falsity and coldness of 
the French drama, endeavored to find a new 
and freer dramatic form. The members of 
this group, like all the upper classes of the 
Christian world at that time, were under the 
charm and influence of the Greek classics, 
and, being utterly indifferent to religious ques- 
tions, they thought that if the Greek drama, 
describing the calamities and sufferings and 
strife of its heroes, represented the highest 
dramatic ideal, then such a description of the 
sufferings and the struggles of heroes would be 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 109 

a sufficient subject in the Christian world, too, 
if only the narrow demands of pseudo-classic- 
alism were rejected. These men, not under- 
standing that, for the Greeks, the strife and 
sufferings of their heroes had a religious sig- 
nificance, imagined that they needed only to 
reject the inconvenient law of the three Unities, 
without introducing into the drama any re- 
ligious element corresponding to their time, 
in order that the drama should have sufficient 
scope in the representation of various moments 
in the lives of historical personages and, in gen- 
eral, of strong human passions. Exactly this 
kind of drama existed at that time among 
the kindred English people, and, becoming 
acquainted with it, the Germans decided that 
precisely such should be the drama of the new 
period. 

Thereupon, because of the clever develop- 
ment of scenes which constituted Shake- 
speare's peculiarity, they chose Shakespeare's 
dramas in preference to all other English dra- 
mas, excluding those which were not in the 
least inferior, but were even superior, to Shake- 
speare. At the head of the group stood Goethe, 
who was then the dictator of public opinion in 



110 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

esthetic questions. He it was who, partly ow 
ing to a desire to destroy the fascination of 
the false French art, partly owing to his desire 
to give a greater scope to his own dramatic 
writing, but chiefly through the agreement of 
his view of life with Shakespeare's, declared 
Shakespeare a great poet. When this error 
was announced by an authority like Goethe, 
all those esthetic critics who did not understand 
art threw themselves on it like crows on carrion 
and began to discover in Shakespeare beauties 
which did not exist, and to extol them. These 
men, German esthetic critics, for the most 
part utterly devoid of esthetic feeling, without 
that simple, direct artistic sensibility which, for 
people with a feeling for art, clearly distin- 
guishes esthetic impressions from all others, 
but believing the authority which had recog- 
nized Shakespeare as • a great poet, began to 
praise the whole of Shakespeare indiscrim- 
inately, especially distinguishing such passages 
as struck them by their effects, or which 
expressed thoughts corresponding to their 
views of life, imagining that these effects and 
these thoughts constitute the essence ofwhat 
is called art. These men acted as blind mei. 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 111 

would act who endeavored to find diamonds 
by touch among a heap of stones they were 
fingering. As the bhnd man would for a long 
time strenuously handle the stones and in the 
end would come to no other conclusion than 
that all stones are precious and especially so 
the smoothest, so also these esthetic critics, 
without artistic feeling, could not but come 
to similar results in relation to Shakespeare. 
To give the greater force to their praise of the 
whole of Shakespeare, they invented esthetic 
theories according to which it appeared that 
no definite religious view of life was necessary 
for works of art in general, and especially for 
the drama ; that for the purpose of the drama 
the representation of human passions and 
characters was quite sufficient; that not only 
was an internal religious illumination of what 
was represented unnecessary, but art should 
be objective, i.e., should represent events 
quite independently of any judgment of good 
and evil. As these theories were founded on 
Shakespeare's own views of life, it naturally 
turned out that the works of Shakespeare 
satisfied these theories and therefore were the 
height of perfection. 



112 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

It is these people who are chiefly responsible 
for Shakespeare's fame. It was principally 
owing to their writings that the interaction 
took place between writers and public which 
expressed itself, and is still expressing itself, 
in an insane worship of Shakespeare which , 
has no rational foundation. These esthetic 
critics have written profound treatises about 
Shakespeare. Eleven thousand volumes have 
been written about him, and a whole science 
of Shakespearology composed; while the pub- 
lic, on the one hand, took more and more inter- 
est, and the learned critics, on the other hand, 
gave further and further explanations, adding ;, 
to the confusion. 

So that the first cause of Shakespeare's fame 
was that the Germans wished to oppose to the 
cold French drama, of which they had grown 
weary, and which, no doubt, was tedious i 
enough, a livelier and freer one. The second' 
cause was that the young German writers 
required a model for writing their own 
dramas. The third and principal cause was 
the activity of the learned and zealous esthetic 
German critics without esthetic feeling, who 
invented the theory of objective art, deliber- 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 113 

ately rejecting the religious essence of the 
drama. 

"But," I shall be asked, "what do you 
understand by the word's religious essence of 
the drama ? May not what you are demand- 
ing for the drama, religious instruction, or di- 
dactics, be called ' tendency, ' a thing incompati- 
ble with true art ? " I reply that by the religious 
essence of art I understand not the direct incul- 
cation of any religious truths in an artistic 
guise, and not an allegorical demonstration 
of these truths, but the exhibition of a definite 
view of life corresponding to the highest re- 
ligious understanding of a given time, which, 
serving as the motive for the composition of 
the drama, penetrates, to the knowledge of 
the author, through all of his work. So it has 
always been with true art, and so it is with 
every true artist in general and especially the 
dramatist. Hence — as it was when the drama 
was a serious thing, and as it should be accord- 
ing to the essence of the matter — that man 
alone can write a drama who has something to 
say to men, and something which is of the great- 
est importance for them : about man's relation 
to God, to the Universe, to the All, the Eternal, 



114 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

tlie Infinite. But when, thanks to the German 
theories about objective art, the idea was 
estabhshed that, for the drama, this was quite 
unnecessary, then it is obvious how a writer 
Hke Shakespeare — Avho had not got developed 
in his mind the rehgious convictions proper 
to his time, who, in fact, had no convictions 
at all, but heaped up in his drama all possi- 
ble events, horrors, fooleries, discussions, and 
effects — could appear to be a dramatic writer 
of the greatest genius. 

But these are all external reasons. The 
fundamental inner cause of Shakespeare's 
fame was and is this: that his dramas were 
"pro captu lectoris," i.e., they corresponded 
to the irreligious and immoral frame of mind 
of the upper classes of his time. 



VIII 

At the beginning of the last century, when 
Goethe was dictator of philosophic thought 
and esthetic laws, a series of casual circum- 
stances made him praise Shakespeare. The 
esthetic critics caught up this praise and took 
to writing their lengthy, misty, learned arti- 
les, and the great European public began to 
be enchanted with Shakespeare. The critics, 
answering to the popular interest, and endeav- 
oring to compete with one another, wrote new 
and ever new essays about Shakespeare; the 
readers and spectators on their side were in- 
creasingly confirmed in their admiration, and 
Shakespeare's fame, like a lump of snow, kept 
growing and growing, until in our time it has 
attained that insane worship which obvious- 
ly has no other foundation than "sugges- 
tion." 

Shakespeare finds no rival, not even ap- 
proximately, either among the old or the new 



116 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

writers. Here are some of the tributes paid 
to him. 

"Poetic truth is the brightest flower in the 
crown of Sliakespeare's merits;" "Shake- 
speare is the greatest morahst of all times;" 
"Shakespeare exhibits such many-sidedness 
and such objectivism that they carry him be- 
yond the limits of time and nationality;" 
"Shakespeare is the greatest genius that has 
hitherto existed;" "For the creation of trag- 
edy, comedy, history, idyll, idyllistic comedy, 
esthetic idyll, for the profoundest presentation, 
or for any casually thrown off, passing piece of 
verse, he is the only man. He not only wields 
an unlimited power over our mirth and our 
tears, over all the workings of passion, humor, 
thought, and observation, but he possesses also 
an infinite region full of the phantasy of fic- 
tion, of a horrifying and an amusing character. 
He possesses penetration both in the world of 
fiction and of reality, and above this reigns one 
and the same truthfulness to character and to 
nature, and the same spirit of humanity;'* 
"To Shakespeare the epithet of Great comes 
of itself; and if one adds that independently 
of his greatness he has, further, become the 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 117 

reformer of all literature, and, moreover, has 
in his works not only expressed the phenom- 
enon of life as it was in his day, but also, by 
the genius of thought which floated in the air 
has prophetically forestalled the direction that 
the social spirit was going to take in the future 
(of which we see a striking example in Hamlet), 
— one may, without hesitation, say that Shake- 
speare was not only a great poet, but the greatest 
of all poets who ever existed, and that in the 
sphere of poetic creation his only worthy rival 
was that same life which in his works he ex- 
pressed to such perfection." 

The obvious exaggeration of this estimate 
proves more conclusively than anything that 
it is the consequence, not of common sense, 
but of suggestion. The more trivial, the lower, 
the emptier a phenomenon is, if only it has 
become the subject of suggestion, the more 
supernatural and exaggerated is the signifi- 
cance attributed to it. The Pope is not merely 
saintly, but most saintly, and so forth. So 
Shakespeare is not merely a good writer, but 
the greatest genius, the eternal teacher of man 
kind. 

Suggestion is alwaysa deceit, and every dc- 



118 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

ceit is an eviL In truth, the suggestion that 
Shakespeare's works are great works of genius, 
presenting the height of both esthetic and eth- 
ical perfection, has caused, and is causing, great 
injury to men. 

This injury is twofold: first, the fall of the 
drama, and the replacement of this important 
weapon of progress by an empty and immoral 
amusement; and secondly, the direct deprava- 
tion of men by presenting to them false models 
for imitation. 

Human life is perfected only through the 
development of the religious consciousness, 
the only element which permanently unites 
men. The development of the religious con- 
sciousness of men is accomplished through 
all the sides of man's spiritual activity. One 
direction of this activity is in art. One sec- 
tion of art, perhaps the most influential, is the 
drama. 

Therefore the drama, in order to deserve 
the importance attributed to it, should serve 
the development of religious consciousness. 
Such has the drama always been, and such it 
was in the Christian world. But upon the 
appearance of Protestantism in its broader 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 119 

sense, 2'.^., the appearance of a new understand- 
ing of Christianity as of a teaching of Ufe, the 
dramatic art did not find a form corresponding 
to the new understanding of Christianity, and 
the men of the Renaissance were carried away 
by the imitation of classical art. This was 
most natural, but the tendency was bound to 
pass, and art had to discover, as indeed it is 
now beginning to do, its new form correspond- 
ing to the change in the understanding of 
Christianity. 

But the discovery of this new form was 
arrested by the teaching arising among Ger- 
man writers at the end of the eighteenth and 
beginning of the nineteenth centuries — as to 
so-called objective art, i.e.y art indiiferent 
to good or evil — and therein the exaggerated 
praise of Shakespeare's dramas, which partly 
corresponded to the esthetic teaching of the 
Germans, and partly served as material for it. 
If there had not been exaggerated praise of 
Shakespeare's dramas, presenting them as the 
most perfect models, the men of the eigh- 
teenth and nineteenth centuries would have 
had to understand that the drama, to have 
a right to exist and to be a serious thing, must 



120 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

serve, as it always has served and can not but 
do otherwise, the development of the religious 
consciousness. And having understood this, 
they would have searched for a new form of 
drama corresponding to their religious under- 
standing. 

But when it was decided that the height of 
perfection was Shakespeare's drama, and that 
we ought to write as he did, not only without 
any religious, but even without any moral, 
significance, then all writers of dramas in imi- 
tation of him began to compose such empty 
pieces as are those of Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, 
and, in Russia, of Pushkin, or the chronicles 
of Ostrovski, Alexis Tolstoy, and an innumer- 
able number of other more or less celebrated 
dramatic productions which fill all the theaters, 
and can be prepared wholesale by any one who 
happens to have the idea or desire to write a 
play. It is only thanks to such a low, trivial 
understanding of the significance of the drama 
that there appears among us that infinite 
quantity of dramatic works describing men's 
actions, positions, characters, and frames of 
mind, not only void of any spiritual substance, 
but often of any human sense. 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 121 

Let not the reader think that I exclude from 
this estimate of contemporary drama the the- 
atrical pieces I have myself incidentally writ- 
ten. I recognize them, as well as all the rest, 
as not having that religious character which 
must form the foundation of the drama of the 
future. 

The drama, then, the most important branch 
of art, has, in our time, become the trivial and 
immoral amusement of a trivial and immoral 
crowd. The worst of it is, moreover, that to 
dramatic art, fallen as low as it is possible to 
fall, is still attributed an elevated significance 
no longer appropriate to it . Dramatists , actors , 
theatrical managers, and the press — this last 
publishing in the most serious tone reports of 
theaters and operas — and the rest, are all 
perfectly certain that they are doing something 
very worthy and important. 

The drama in our time is a great man fallen, 
who has reached the last degree of his degrada- 
tion, and at the same time continues to pride 
himself on his past of which nothing now remains . 
The public of our time is like those who merci- 
lessly amuse themselves over this man once 
so great and now in the lowest stage of his fall. 



122 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

Such is one of the mischievous effects of the 
epidemic suggestion about the greatness of 
Shakespeare. Another deplorable result of 
this worship is the presentation to men of a 
false model for imitation: If people wrote of 
Shakespeare that for his time he was a good 
writer, that he had a fairly good turn for verse, 
was an intelligent actor and good stage man- 
ager — even were this appreciation incorrect 
and somewhat exaggerated — if only it were 
moderately true, people of the rising generation 
might remain free from Shakespeare's influ ' 
ence. But when every young man entering 
into life in our time has presented to him, aji 
the model of moral perfection, not the religiouji 
and moral teachers of mankind, but first of 
all Shakespeare, concerning whom it has been 
decided and is handed down by learned men 
from generation to generation, as an incontest- 
able truth, that he was the greatest poet, the 
greatest teacher of life, the young man can 
not remain free from this pernicious influence. 
When he is reading or listening to Shake- 
speare the question for him is no longer whether 
Shakespeare be good or bad, but only: In 
what consists that extraordinary beauty, both 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 123 

esthetic and ethical, of which he has been 
assured by learned men whom he respects, 
and which he himself neither sees nor feels ? 
And constraining himself, and distorting his 
esthetic and ethical feeling, he tries to conform 
to the ruling opinion. He no longer believes 
in himself, but in what is said by the learned 
people whom he respects. I have experienced 
all this. Then reading critical examinations 
of the dramas and extracts from books with 
explanatory comments, he begins to imagine 
that he feels something of the nature of an 
artistic impression. The longer this continues, 
the more does his esthetical and ethical feeling 
become distorted. He ceases to .distinguish 
directly and clearly what is artistic from an 
artificial imitation of art. But, above all, 
having assimilated the immoral view of life 
which penetrates all Shakespeare's writings, he 
loses the capacity of distinguishing good from 
evil. And the error of extolling an insignificant, 
inartistic waiter — not only not moral, but direct- 
ly immoral — executes its destructive work. 

This is why I think that the sooner people 
free themselves from the false glorification of 
Shakespeare, the better it will be. 



124 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

First, having freed themselves from this de- 
ceit, men will come to understand that the 
drama which has no religious element at its 
foundation is not only not an important and 
good thing, as it is now supposed to be, but the 
most trivial and despicable of things. Having 
understood this, they will have to search for, 
and work out, a new form of modern drama, 
a drama which will serve as the development! 
and confirmation of the highest stage of religious 
consciousness in men. 

Secondly, having freed themselves from this 
hypnotic state, men will understand that the 
trivial and immoral works of Shakespeare and I 
his imitators, aiming merely at the recreation i 
and amusement of the spectators, can not; 
possibly represent the teaching of life, and that, , 
while there is no true religious drama, the 
teaching of life should be sought for in other 
sources. 



II PART II 

APPENDIX 



APPENDIX CONTENTS 

I. Shakespeare's Attitude toward the 

Working Classes, by Ernest Crosby, 127 

II. Letter from Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, . 166 



SHAKESPEARE'S ATTITUDE TOWARD 
THE WORKING CLASSES 

By Ernest Crosby 

"Shakespeare was of us," cries Browning, in his 
*'Lost Leader," while lamenting the defection of 
Wordsworth from the ranks of progress and Hberal- 
ism — "Milton was for us. Burns, Shelley were with 
us — they watch from their graves!" There can, 
indeed, be no question of the fidelity to democracy 
of Milton, the republican pamphleteer, nor of Burns, 
the proud plowman, who proclaimed the fact that 
"a man's a man for a' that," nor of Shelley, the 
awakened aristocrat, who sang to such as Burns 

"Men of England, wherefore plow 
For the lords who lay ye low ?" 

But Shakespeare ? — Shakespeare ? — where is there a 
line in Shakespeare to entitle him to a place in this 
brotherhood ? Is there anything in his plays that is 
in the least inconsistent with all that is reactionary ? 
A glance at Shakespeare's lists of dramatis per- 
sonce is sufficient to show that he was unable to con- 
ceive of any situation rising to the dignity of tragedy 
in other than royal and ducal circles. It may be 
said in explanation of this partiality for high rank 



128 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

that he was only following the custom of the drama- 
tists of his time, but this is a poor plea for a man of 
great genius, whose business it is precisely to lead 
and not to follow. Nor is the explanation altogether 
accuratCiJ In his play, the "Pinner of Wakefield," 
first printed in 1599, Robert Greene makes a hero, 
and a very stalwart one, of a mere pound-keeper, 
who proudly refuses knighthood at the hands of the 
king. There were other and earlier plays in vogue 
in Shakespeare's day treating of the triumphs of men 
of the people, one, for instance, which commemorated 
the rise of Sir Thomas Gresham, the merchant's son, 
and another, entitled "The History of Richard 
Whittington, of his Low Birth, his Great Fortune"; 
but he carefully avoided such material in seeking 
plots for his dramas. Cardinal Wolsey, the butch- 
er's son, is indeed the hero of "Henry VIII. ," but 
his humble origin is only mentioned incidentally as 
something to be ashamed of. What greater oppor- 
tunity for idealizing the common people ever pre- 
sented itself to a dramatist than to Shakespeare 
when he undertook to draw the character of Joan 
of Arc in the second part of "Henry VI.",'' He 
knew how to create noble women — that is one of his 
special glories — but he not only refuses to see any- 
'' ing noble in the peasant girl who led France to 
ictory, but he deliberately insults her memory with 
' e coarsest and most cruel calumnies. Surely the 
hipse of more than a century and a half might have 
enabled a man of honor, if not of genius, to do justice 
to an enemy of the weaker sex, and if Joan had been 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 129 

a member of the French royal family we may be sure 
that she would have received better treatment. 

The question of the aristocratic tendency of the 
drama was an active one in Shakespeare's time. 
There was a good deal of democratic feeling in the 
burghers of London-town, and they resented the 
courtly preiudices of their playwrights and their 
habit of holding up plain citizens to ridicule upon 
the stage, whenever they deigned to present them 
at all. The Prolog in Beaumont and Fletcher's 
^"Knight of the Burning Pestle" gives sufficient evi- 
dence of this. The authors adopted the device of 
having a C itizen leap upon the stage and interrupt 
the Speaker of the Prolog by shouting 

"Hold your peace, goodman boy!" 
Speaker of Prolog: "What do you mean, sir?" 
Citizen: "That you have no good meaning; this seven 
year there hath been plays at this house. I have ob- 
served it, you have still girds at citizens." 

The Citizen goes on to inform the Speaker of the 
Prolog that he is a grocer, and to demand that he 
"present something notably in honor of the com- 
mons of the city." For a hero he will have "a gro- 
cer, and he shall do admirable things." But this 
proved to be a joke over too serious a matter, for at 
the first representation of the play in 1611 it was 
cried down by the citizens and apprentices, who did 
not appreciate its satire upon them, and it was rot 
revived for many years thereafter. It will not an- 
swer, therefore, to say that the idea of celebrating 
the middle and lower classes never occurred to 
9 



130 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare, for it was a subject of discussion amoDj 
his contemporaries. 

It is hardly possible to construct a play with n 
characters but monarchs and their suites, and al 
the same time preserve the verisimilitudes of life 
Shakespeare was obliged to make some use of ser:| 
vants, citizens, and populace. How has he porf 
trayed them ? In one play alone has he given ujl 
the whole stage to them, and it is said that th» 
"Merry Wives of Windsor" was only written at th<| 
request of Queen Elizabeth, who wished to see Si 
John Falstaff in love. It is from beginning to enc 
one prolonged "gird at citizens," and we can hardli 
wonder that they felt a grievance against the dra 
matic profession. In the other plays of Shakespeare 
the humbler classes appear for the main part onlj 
occasionally and incidentally. His opinion of then 
is indicated more or less picturesquely by the name; 
which he selects for them. There are, for example 
Bottom, the weaver; Flute, the bellows-maker i 
Snout and Sly, tinkers; Quince, the carpenter) 
Snug, the joiner; Starveling, the tailor; Smooth, 
the silkman; Shallow and Silence, country justices 
Elbow and Hull, constables; Dogberry and Verges; 
Fang and Snare, sheriffs' officers; Mouldy, Shadow 
Wart, and Bull-calf, recruits; Feebee, at once a re- 
cruit and a woman's tailor. Pilch and Patch-Breech 
fishermen (though these last two appellations may 
be mere nicknames) ; Potpan, Peter Thump, Simple 
Gobbo, and Susan Grindstone, servants; Speed, "s 
clownish servant"; Slender, Pistol, Nym, Sneak 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 131 

Doll Tear-sheet, Jane Smile, Costard, Oatcake, 
Seaeoal, and various anonymous "clowns" and 
"fools." Shakespeare rarely gives names of this 
character to any but the lowly in life, altho per- 
haps we should cite as exceptions Sir Toby Belch 
and Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek in "Twelfth Night"; the 
vicar. Sir Oliver Mar-Text, in "As You Like It"; 
Moth, the page, in "Love's Labor Lost," and Froth, 
"a foolish gentleman," in "Measure for Measure," 
but none of these personages quite deserves to rank 
as an aristocrat. Such a system of nomenclature as 
we have exposed is enough of itself to fasten the 
stigma of absurdity upon the characters subjected 
to it, and their occupations. Most of the trades are 
held up for ridicule in "Midsummer Night's 
Dream"; Holof ernes, the schoolmaster, is made 
ridiculous in "Love's Labor Lost," and we are told 
of the middle-class Nym, Pistol, and Bardolph that 
"three such antics do not amount to a man" 
(Henry V., Act 3, Sc. 2). But it is not necessary to 
rehearse the various familiar scenes in which these 
fantastically named individuals raise a laugh at 
their own expense. 

The language employed by nobility and royalty 
in addressing those of inferior station in Shake- 
speare's plays maybe taken, perhaps, rather as an 
indication of the manners of the times than as an 
expression of his own feeling, but even so it must 
have been a little galling to the poorer of his audi- 
tors. "Whoreson dog," "whoreson peasant," 
"slave," "you cur," "rogue," "rascal," "dunghill," 



132 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

"crack-hemp," and "notorious villain" — these are i 
few of the epithets with which the plays abound 
The Duke of York accosts Thomas Horner, an ar 
morer, as "base dunghill villain and mechanical' 
(Henry VI., Part 2, Act 2, Sc. 3); Gloster speak} 
of the warders of the Tower as "dunghill grooms' 
(lb., Part 1, Act 1, Sc. 3), and Hamlet of the grave 
digger as an "ass" and "rude knave." Valentine 
tells his servant. Speed, that he is born to be hangec 
(Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 1, Sc. 1), and Gon- 
zalo pays a like compliment to the boatswain who is 
doing his best to save the ship in the "Tempest' 
(Act 1, Sc. 1). This boatswain is not sufficientl} 
impressed by the grandeur of his noble cargo, and 
for his pains is called a "brawling, blasphemous, un- 
charitable dog," a "cur," a "whoreson, insoleni 
noise-maker," and a "wide-chapped rascal." Rich 
ard III.'s Queen says to a gardener, who is guilty c^ 
nothing but giving a true report of her lord's depos 
tion and who shows himself a kind-hearted felloT»' 
"Thou little better thing than earth," "thou wretch' 
Henry VIII. ta'ks of a "lousy footboy," and the 
Duke of Suffolk, when he is about to be killed b} 
his pirate captor at Dover, calls him "obscure and 
lowly swain," "jaded groom," and "base slave,' 
dubs his crew "paltry, servile, abject drudges," anc 
declares that his own head would 

"sooner dance upon bloody pole 
Than stand uncovered to a vulgar groom. ' 

(Henry VI., Part 2, Act 4, Sc. 1.) 

Petruchio "wrings Grumio by the ear," and Kath- 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 133 

erine beats the same unlucky servant. His mas- 
ter indulges in such terms as " foolish knave," 
''peasant swain," and "whoreson malthorse drudge" 
in addressing him; cries out to his servants, "off with 
my boots, you rogues, you villains!" and strikes 
them. He pays his compliments to a tailor in the 
following lines: 

'O monstrous arrogance! Thou liest, thou thread, thou 

thimble, 
Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, 
Tnou flea, thou nit, thou winter cricket thou ; 
Braved in my own house by a skein of thread! 
Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant! ' 

(Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, Sc. 3.) 

Joan of Arc speaks of her "contemptible estate" 
as a shepherd's daughter, and afterward, denying 
her father, calls him "Decrepit miser! base, ignoble 
wretch!" (Henry VI., Part 1, Act 1, Sc. 2, and Act 
.5, Sc. 4.) It is hard to believe that Shakespeare 
.' would have so frequently allowed his characters to 
express their contempt for members of the lower 
orders of society if he had not had some sympathy 
with their opinions. 

Shakespeare usually employs the common people 
whom he brings upon the stage merely to raise a 
laugh (as, for instance, the flea-bitten carriers in the 
inn-yard at Rochester, in Henry IV., Part 1, Act 2, 
Sc. 1), but occasionally they are scamps as tcU as 
fools. They amuse us when they become hope- 
lessly entangled in their sentences {vide Romeo and 
JuHet, Act 1, Sc. 2), or when Juliet's nurse blunder- 



134 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

ingly makes her think that Romeo is slain insteat 
of Tybalt; but when this same lady, after taking 
Romeo s money, espouses the cause of the County 
Paris — or when on the eve of Agincourt we are in- 
troduced to a group of cowardly English soldiers — 
or when Coriolanus points out the poltroonery of the 
Roman troops, and says that all would have been 
lost "but for our gentlemen," we must feel detesta- 
tion for them. Juliet's nurse is not the only dis- 
loyal servant, Shylock's servant, Launcelot Gobbo, 
helps Jessica to deceive her father, and Margaret, 
the Lady Hero's gentlewoman, brings about the dis- 
grace of her mistress by fraud. Olivia's waiting - 
woman in " Twelfth Night " is honest enough, but she 
is none too modest in her language, but in this re- 
spect Dame Quickly in " Henry IV." can easily rival 
her. Peter Thump, when forced to a judicial com- 
bat with his master, displays his cowardice, altho in 
the end he is successful (Henry VI., Act 2, Part 2, 
Sc. 3), and Stephano, a drunken butler, adorns 
the stage in the "Tempest." We can not blame 
Shakespeare for making use of cutthroats and vil- 
lains in developing his plots, but we might have been 
spared the jokes which the jailors of Posthumus per- 
petrate when they come to lead him to the scaffold, 
and the ludicrous English of the clown who sup- 
plies Cleopatra with an asp. The apothecary who 
is in such wretched plight that he sells poison to 
Romeo in spite of a Draconian law, gives us another 
unflattering picture of a tradesman; and when Fal- 
staff declares, "I would I were a weaver; I could 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 135 

sing psalms or anything," we have a premature re- 
flection on the Puritan, middle-class conscience and 
religion. In "As You Like It," Shakespeare came 
near drawing a pastoral sketch of shepherds and 
shepherdesses on conventional lines. If he failed to 
do so, it was as much from lack of respect for the 
keeping of sheep as for the unrealities of pastoral 
poetry. Rosalind does not scruple to call the fair 
Phebe "foul," and, as for her hands, she says: 

"I saw her hand; she has a leathern hand, 
A freestone colored hand ; I verily did think 
That her old gloves were on, but 'twas her hands; 
She has a housewife's hand." 

No one with a high respect for housewifery could 
have written that line. When in the same play 
Jaques sees the pair of rural lovers. Touchstone and 
Audrey, approaching, he cries: "There is, sure, an- 
other flood, and these couples are coming to the ark! 
Here come a pair of very strange beasts, which in all 
tongues are called fools" (Act 5, Sc. 4). The 
clown. Touchstone, speaks of kissing the cow's dugs 
which his former sweetheart had milked, and then 
marries Audrey in a tempest of buffoonery. How- 
beit. Touchstone remains one of the few rustic char- 
acters of Shakespeare who win our affections, and 
at the same time he is witty enough to deserve the 
title which Jaques bestows upon him of a "rare 
fellow." 

Occasionally Shakespeare makes fun of persons 
who are somewhat above the lower classes in rank. 
I have mentioned those on whom he bestows comi- 



136 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

cal names. He indulges in humor also at the ex- 
pense of Ihe two Scottish captains, Jamy and Mac- 
morris, and the honest Welsh captain, Fluellen 
(Henry V., Act 3, Sc. 2 et passim), and shall we for- 
get the inimitable Falstaff? But, while making 
every allowance for these diversions into somewhat 
nobler quarters (the former of which are explained 
by national prejudices), do they form serious excep- 
tions to tlie rule, and can Falstaff be taken, for in- 
stance, as a representative of the real aristocracy? 
As Queen and courtiers watched his antics on the 
stage, we may be sure that it never entered their 
heads that the "girds" were directed at them or 
their kind. 

The appearance on Shakespeare's stage of a man 
of humble birth who is virtuous without being ridic- 
ulous is so rare an event that it is worth while to 
enumerate the instances. Now and then a servant 
or other obscure character is made use of as a mere 
lay figure of which nothing good or evil can be pre- 
dicated, but usually they are made more or less ab- 
surd. Only at long intervals do we see persons of 
this class at once serious and upright. As might 
have been expected, it is more often the servant than 
any other member of the lower classes to whom 
Shakespeare attributes good qualities, for the ser- 
vant is a sort of attachment to the gentleman and 
shines with the reflection of his virtues. The noblest 
quality which Shakespeare can conceive of in a ser- 
vant is loyalty, and in " Richard II." (Act 5, Sc. 3) 
he gives us a good example in the character of a 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 137 

groom who remains faithful to the king even when 
the latter is cast into prison. In " Cymbeline " we 
are treated to loyalty ad nauseam. The king orders 
Pisanio, a trusty servant, to be tortured without 
cause, and his reply is, 

"Sir, my life is yours. 
I humbly set it at your will." 

(Act 4, Sc. 3.) 

In " King Lear " a good servant protests against the 
cruelty of Regan and Cornwall toward Gloucester, 
and is killed for his courage. " Give me my sword," 
cries Regan. "A peasant stand up thus!" (Act 3, 
Sc. 7). And other servants also show sympathy for 
the unfortunate earl. We all remember the fool who, 
almost alone, was true to Lear, but, then, of course, 
he was a fool. In " Timon of Athens " we have 
an unusual array of good servants, but it is doubtful 
if Shakespeare wrote the play, and these characters 
make his authorship more doubtful. Flaminius, 
Timon 's servant, rejects a bribe with scorn (Act 
3, Sc. 1). Another of his servants expresses his con- 
tempt for his master's false friends (Act 3, Sc. 3), 
and when Timon finally loses his fortune and his 
friends forsake him, his servants stand by him. " Yet 
do our hearts wear Timon's livery" (Act 4, Sc. 2). 
Adam, the good old servant in "As You Like It," who 
follows his young master Orlando into exile, is, like 
Lear's fool, a noteworthy example of the loyal servitor. 

"Master, go on, and I will follow thee 
To the last gasp with truth and loyalty." 

(Act 2, Sc. S.) 



138 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

But Shakespeare takes care to point out that such 
fidehty in servants is most uncommon and a relic of 
the good old times — 

"O good old man, how well in thee appears 
The constant service of the antique world, 
When service sweat for duty, nor for meed ! 
Thou art not for the fashion of these times. 
When none will sweat but for promotion." 

Outside the ranks of domestic servants we find a 
few cases of honorable poverty in Shakespeare. In 
the play just quoted, Corin, the old shepherd, says: 

'Sir, I am a true laborer; I earn that I eat, get that I wear; 
owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of other 
men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of 
my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck." 

(As You Like It, Act 3, Sc. 2.) 

in short, an ideal proletarian from the point of view 
of the aristocrat. 

The ' ' Winter's Tale ' ' can boast of another good shep- 
herd (Act 3, Sc. 3), but he savors a little of burlesque. 
"Macbeth" has several humble worthies. There is 
a good old man in the second act (Sc. 2), and a good 
messenger in the fourth (Sc. 2). King Duncan 
praises highly the sergeant who brings the news of 
Macbeth's victory, and uses language to him such as 
Shakespeare's yeomen are not accustomed to hear 
(Act 1, Sc. 2). And in "Antony and Cleopatra" we 
make the acquaintance of several exemplary com- 
mon soldiers. Shakespeare puts flattering words 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 139 

into the mouth of Henry V. when he addresses the 
troops before Agincourt: 

"For he to-day that sheds his blood with me 
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile 
This day shall gentle his condition." 

(Act 4, So. 4.) 

And at Harfleur he is even more complaisant : 

"And you, good yeomen, 
Whose limbs were made in England, shew us here 
The metal of your pasture ; let us swear 
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not, 
For there is none of you so mean and base 
That hath not noble luster in your eyes." (Act 3, Sc. 1.) 

The rank and file always fare well before a battle. 

"Oh, it's 'Tommy this' and 'Tommy that' an' ' Tommy, 
go away'; 
But it's ' Thank you, Mr. Atkins,' when the band begins 
to play." 

I should like to add some instances from Shake- 
speare's works of serious and estimable behavior 
on the part of individuals representing the lower 
classes, or of considerate treatment of them on the 
part of their "betters," but I have been unable to 
find any, and the meager list must end here. 

But to return to Tommy Atkins. He is no longer 
Mr. Atkins after the battle. Mont joy, the French 
herald, comes to the English king under a flag of 
truce and asks that they be permitted to bury their 
dead and 

"Sort our nobles from our common men; 
For many of our princes (wo the while!) 



140 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

Lie drowned and soaked in mercenary blood; 

So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs 

In blood of princes." (Henry V., Act 4, So. 7.) 

With equal courtesy Richard III., on Bosworth 
field, speaks of his opponents to the gentlemen around 
him: 

"Remember what you are to cope withal — 
A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, 
A scum of Bretagne and base lackey peasants." 

(Act 5, Sc. 3.) 

But Shakespeare does not limit such epithets to 
armies. Having, as we have seen, a poor opinion 
of the lower classes, taken man by man, he thinks, if 
anything, still worse of them taken en masse, and at 
his hands a crowd of plain workingmen fares worst 
of all. "Hempen home-spuns," Puck calls them, 
and again 

"A crew of patches, rude mechanicals, 
That work for bread upon Athenian stalls." 

Bottom, their leader, is, according to Oberon, a 
"hateful fool," and according to Puck, the "shallow- 
est thick-skin of that barren sort" (Midsummer 
Night's Dream, Act 3, Scs. 1 and 2, Act 4, Sc. 1). 
Bottom's advice to his players contains a small galaxy 
of compliments: 

"In any case let Thisby have clean linen, and let not him 
that plays the lion pare his nails, for they shall hang out 
for the lion's claws. And, most dear actors, eat no onion 
or garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath, and I do not 
doubt to hear them say, it is a sweet comedy." 

(lb. Act 4, Sc. 2.) 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 141 

The matter of the breath of the poor weighs upon 
Shakespeare and his characters. Cleopatra shud- 
ders at the thought that 

"mechanic slaves. 
With greasy aprons, rubs and hammers, shall 
Uplift us to the view ; in their thick breaths 
Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, 
And forced to drink their vapor." 

(Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, Sc. 2.) 

Coriolanus has his sense of smell especially de- 
veloped. He talks of the "stinking breaths" of 
the people (Act 2, Sc. 1), and in another place 
says: 

" You conunon cry of curs, whose breath I hate 
As reek of rotten fens, whose love I prize 
As the dead carcasses of unburied men 
That do corrupt the air, I banish you," 

and he goes on to taunt them with cowardice (Act 
3, Sc. 3). They are the "mutable, rank-scented 
many" (Act 3, Sc. 1). His friend Menenius is 
equally complimentary to his fellow citizens. "You 
are they," says he, 

"That make the air unwholesome, when you cast 
Your stinking, greasy caps, in hooting at 
Coriolanus's exile." (Act 4, Sc. 7.) 

And he laughs at the "apron-men" of Cominius 
and their "breath of garlic-eaters" (Act 4, Sc. 7). 
When Coriolanus is asked to address the people, he 
replies by saying: "Bid them wash their faces, and 
keep their teeth clean" (Act 2, Sc. 3). According 



142 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

to Shakespeare, the Roman populace had made no 
advance in cleanliness in the centuries between Co- 
riolanus and Caesar. #/" Casca gives a vivid picture of 
the offer of the crown to Julius, and his rejection of 
it: "And still as he refused it -the rabblement 
shouted, and clapped their chapped hands, and 
threw up their sweaty nght-caps, and uttered such 
a deal of stinking breath, because Caesar refused the 
crown, that it had almost choked Caesar, for he 
swooned and fell down at it. And for mine own 
part I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips 
and receiving the bad air." And he calls them the 
"tag-rag people" (Julius Caesar, Act 1, Sc. 2). 
The play of " Coriolanus " is a mine of insults to the 
people and it becomes tiresome to quote them. The 
hero calls them the "beast with many heads" (Act 
4, Sc. 3), and again he says to the crowd: 

"What's the matter, you dissentious rogues, 
That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion 
Make yourself scabs ? 

First Citizen. We have ever your good word. 

Coriolanus. He that will give good words to ye will flatter 
Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs, 
That like not peace nor war ? The one affrights you, 
The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you. 
Where he would find you lions, finds you hares; 
Where foxes, geese; you are no surer, no, 
Than is the coal of fire upon the ice, 
Or hailstone in the sun. Your wtue is 
To make him worthy whose offense subdues him, 
And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness 
Deserves your hate; and your affections are 
A sick man's appetite, who desires most that 
Which v/ould increase his evil. He that depends 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 143 

Upon your favors, swims with fins of lead. 

And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye? 

With every minute you do change a mind, 

And call him noble that was now your hate, 

Him vile that was your garland." (Act 1, Sc. 1.) 

His mother, Volumnia, is of like mind. She calls 
the people "our general louts" (Act 3, Sc. 2). She 
says to Junius Brutus, the tribune of the people: 

"'Twas you incensed the rabble. 
Cats, that can judge as fitly of his worth 
As I can of those mysteries which Heaven 
Will not leave Earth to know." (Act 4, Sc. 2). 

In the same play Cominius talks of the "dull trib- 
unes" and "fusty plebeians" (Act 1, Sc. 9). Mene- 
nius calls them "beastly plebeians" (Act 2, Sc. 1), re- 
fers to their "multiplying spawn" (Act 2, Sc. 2), and 
says to the crowd: 

"Rome and her rats are at the point of battle," 

(Act 1, Sc. 2). 

The dramatist makes the mob cringe before Co- 
riolanus. When he appears, the stage directions 
show that the "citizens steal away." (Act 1, Sc. 1.) 

As the Roman crowd of the time of Coriolanus is 
fickle, so is that of Caesar's. Brutus and Antony 
sway them for and against his assassins with ease : 

"First Citizen. This Caesar was a tyrant. 
Second Citizen. Nay, that's certain. 

We are blessed that Rome is rid of him. , . . 



144 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

First Citizen. (After hearing a description of the mur- 
der.) O piteous spectacle! 

2 Cit. O noble Caesar! 

3 Cit. O woful day! 

4 Cit. O traitors, \illains! 

1 Cit. O most bloody sight! 

2 Cit. We will be revenged; revenge! about — seek — 
burn, fire — kill — slay — let not a traitor live ! " (Act 3, Sc. 2.) 

The Tribune Marullus reproaches them with hav- 
ing forgotten Pompey, and calls them 

"You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things." 

He persuades them not to favor Caesar, and when 
they leave him he asks his fellow tribune, Flavius, 

"See, whe'r their basest metal be not moved ?" 

(Act 1, Sc. 1.) 

Flavius also treats them with scant courtesy: 

"Hence, home, you idle creatures, get you home. 
Is this a holiday? What! you know not. 
Being mechanical, you ought not walk 
Upon a laboring day without the sign 
Of your profession .? " (lb. ) 

The populace of England is as changeable as that 
of Rome, if Shakespeare is to be believed. The 
Archbishop of York, who had espoused the cause of 
Richard 11. against Henry IV., thus soliloquizes: 

"The commonwealth is sick of their own choice; 
Their over greedy love hath surfeited; 
An habitation giddy and unsure 
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart. 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 145 



O thou fond man}^! With what loud applause 

Didst thou beat Heaven with blessing Bolingbroke, 

Before he was what thou would'st have him be! 

And now being trimmed in thine own desires. 

Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him, 

That thou provokest thyself to cast him up. 

So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge 

Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard, 

And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up, 

And howlst to find it." (Henry IV., Part 2, Act 1, Sc. 3.) 

Gloucester in " Henry VI." (Part 2, Act 2, Sc. 4) 
notes the fickleness of the masses. He says, ad- 
dressing his absent wife: 

"Sweet Nell, ill can thy noble mind abrook 
The abject people, gazing on thy face 
With en\aous looks, laughing at thy shame. 
That erst did follow thy proud chariot wheels 
When thou didst ride in trimnph through the streets." 

When she arrives upon the scene in disgrace, she 
says to him: 

"Look how they gaze; 
See how the giddy multitude do point 
And nod their heads and throw their eyes on thee. 
Ah, Gloster, hide thee from their hateful looks." 

And she calls the crowd a "rabble" (lb.), a term 
also used in "Hamlet " (Act 4, Sc. 5). Again, in part 
III. of " Henry VI.," Clifford, dying on the battle- 
field w^hile fighting for King Henry, cries: 

"The common people swarm like summer flies, 
And whither fly the gnats but to the sun ? 
And who shines now but Henry's enemies.?" 

(Act 2, Sc. 6.) 
10 



146 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

And Henry himself, conversing with the keepers 
who have imprisoned him in the name of Edward 
IV., says: 

"Ah, simple men! you know not what you swear. 
Look, as I blow this feather from my face, 
And as the air blows it to me again, 
Obeyii ^with my wind when I do blow. 
And yielding to another when it blows. 
Commanded always by the greater gust, 
Such is the lightness of you common men." 

(lb., Act 3, Sc. 1.) 

Suffolk, in the First Part of the same trilogy (Act 
5, Sc. 5), talks of "worthless peasants," meaning, 
perhaps, "property-less peasants," and when Salis- 
bury comes to present the demands of the people, he 
calls him 

"the Lord Ambassador 
Sent from a sort of tinkers to the king," 

(Part 2, Act 3, Sc. 2.) 

and says: 

" 'Tis like the Commons, rude unpolished hinds 
Could send such message to their sovereign." 

Cardinal Beaufort mentions the "uncivil kernes 
of Ireland" (lb., Part 2, Act 3, Sc. 1), and in the 
same play the crowd makes itself ridiculous by 
shouting, "A miracle," when the fraudulent beggar 
Simpcox, who had pretended to be lame and blind, 
jumps over a stool to escape a whipping (Act 2, Sc. 
1). Queen Margaret receives petitioners with the 
words "Away, base cullions" (lb.. Act 1, Sc. 3), and 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 147 

among other flattering remarks applied here and 
there to the lower classes we may cite the epithets 
"ye rascals, ye rude slaves," addressed to a crowd 
by a porter in Henry VIII., and that of "lazy knaves" 
given by the Lord Chamberlain to the porters for 
having let in a "trim rabble" (Act 5, Sc. 3). Hu- 
bert, in King John, presents us with an unvarnished 
picture of the common people receiving the news of 
Prince Arthur's death: 

"I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus. 
The whilst his iron did on his anvil cool. 
With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news; 
Who, with his shears and measure in his hand, 
Standing on slippers (which his nimble haste 
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet), 
Told of a many thousand warlike French 
That were embattailed and rank'd in Kent. 
Another lean, unwashed artificer, 
Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur's death." 

(Act 4, Sc. 2.) 

Macbeth, while sounding the murderers whom he 
intends to employ, and who say to him, "We are 
men, my liege," answers: 

"Ay, in the catalogue, ye go for men 
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, 
Shoughs, water-sugs, and demi-wolves, are cleped 
All by the name of dogs." (Act 3, Sc. 1.) 

As Coriolanus is held up to our view as a pattern 
of noble bearing toward the people, so Richard II. 
condemns the courteous behavior of the future 
Henry IV. on his way into banishment. He says: 



148 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

"Ourselves, and Bushy, Bagot here and Green 
Observed his courtship to the common people; 
How he did seem to dive into their hearts 
With humble and familiar courtesy; 
What reverence he did throw away on slaves; 
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles 
And patient overbearing of his fortune, 
As' twere to banish their effects with him. 
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench ; 
A brace of draymen did God speed him well 
And had the tribute of his supple knee. 
With 'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends.' " 
(Richard H., Act 1, Sc. 4.) 

The King of France, in "All's Well that Ends 
Well," commends to Bertram the example of his late 
father in his relations with his inferiors : 

"Who were below him 
He used as creatures of another place. 
And bowed his eminent top to their low ranks, 
Making them proud of his humility 
In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man 
Might be a copy to these younger times." (Act 1, Sc. 2. ) 

Shakespeare had no fondness for these "younger 
times," with their increasing suggestion of democ- 
racy. Despising the masses, he had no sympathy 
with the idea of improving their condition or increas- 
ing their power. He saw the signs of the times 
with foreboding, as did his hero, Hamlet: 

"By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have 
taken note of it; the age has grown so picked, that 
the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the 
courtier, he galls his kibe." There can easily be 
too much liberty, according to Shakespeare — "too 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 149 

much liberty, my Liicio, liberty" (Measure for 
Measure, Act 1, Sc. 3), but the idea of too much 
authority is foreign to him. Claudio, himself under 
arrest, sings its praises: 

"Thus can the demi-god, Authority, 
Make us pay down for our offense by weight, — 
The words of Heaven; — on whom it will, it will; 
On whom it will not, so; yet still 'tis just." (lb.) 

Ulysses, in " Troilus and Cressida " (Act 1, Sc. 3), 
delivers a long panegyric upon authority, rank, and 
degree, which may be taken as Shakespeare's con- 
fession of faith: 

"Degree being vizarded, 
Th' unworthiest shews as fairly in the mask. 
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center, 
Observe degree, priority, and place, 
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, 
Office and custom, in all line of order; 
And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol, 
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered 
Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye 
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil. 
And posts, like the commandments of a king, 
Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets, 
In evil mixture, to disorder wander. 
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny! 
What raging of the sea, shaking of the earth. 
Commotion of the winds, frights, changes, horrors, 
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate 
The unity and married calm of states 
Quite from their fixture! Oh, when degree is shaked. 
Which is the ladder of all high designs, 
The enterprise is sick. How could communities, 
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities. 
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, 



150 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

The primogenity and due of birth, 

Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels, 

But by degree stand in authentic place ? 

Take but degree away, untune the string, 

And hark, what discord follows! each thing meets 

In mere oppugnancy; the bounded waters 

Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores. 

And make a sop of all this solid globe; 

Strength should be lord of imbecility. 

And the rude son should strike his father dead ; 

Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong, 

(Between whose endless jar justice resides) 

Should lose their names, and so should justice too. 

Then everj^hing includes itself in power. 

Power into will, wall into appetite; 

And appetite, a universal wolf. 

So doubly seconded w ith will and power, 

Must make perforce an universal prey, 

And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, 

This chaos, when degree is suffocate, 

Follows the choking; 

And this neglection of degree it is, 

That by a pace goes backward, in a purpose 

It hath to climb. The General's disdained 

By him one step below; he by the next; 

That next by hrni beneath; so every step, 

Exampled by the first pace that is sick 

Of his superiors, grows to an envious fever 

Of pale and bloodless emulation; 

And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, 

Not her ow^n sinews. To end a tale of length, 

Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength." 

There is no hint in this eloquent apostrophe of 
the difficulty of determining among men who shall 
be the sun and who the satellite, nor of the fact that 
the actual arrangements, in Shakespeare's time, at 
any rate, depended altogether upon that very force 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 151 

which Ulysses deprecates. In another scene in the 
same play the wily Ithacan again gives way to his 
passion for authority and eulogizes somewhat ex- 
travagantly the paternal, prying, omnipresent State : 

"The providence that's in a watchful state 
Knows almost every grain of Plutus' gold, 
Finds bottom in th' incomprehensive deeps. 
Keeps place with tliought, and almost, like the gods. 
Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles. 
There is a mystery (with which relation 
Durst never meddle) in the soul of state. 
Which hath an operation more divine 
Than breath or pen can give expressure to." 

(Act 3, Sc. 3.) 

The State to which Ulysses refers is of course a 
monarchical State, and the idea of democracy is ab- 
horrent to Shakespeare. Coriolanus expresses his 
opinion of it when he says to the people : 

"What's the matter, 
That in these several places of the city 
You cry against the noble Senate, who. 
Under the gods, keep you in awe, which else 
Would feed on one another?" (Act 2, Sc. 1.) 

The people should have no voice in the govern- 
ment — 

"This double worship, — 
Where one part does disdain with cause, the other 
Insult without all reason, where gentry, title, wisdom. 
Can not conclude, but by the yea and no 
Of general ignorance, — it must omit 
Real necessities, and give away the while 
To unstable slightness. Purpose so barred, it follows, 



152 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 



Nothing is done to purpose; therefore, beseech you, 

You that will be less fearful than discreet. 

That love the fiuidamental part of state 

More than you doubt the change on't, that prefer 

A noble life before a long, and wish 

To jump a body with a dangerous physic 

That's sure of death without it, at once pluck out 

The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick 

The sweet which is their poison." (lb. Act 3, Sc. 1.) 

It is the nobility who should rule — 

"It is a purposed thing and grows by plot 
To curb the will of the nobility; 
Suffer't and live with such as can not rule, 
Nor ever will be ruled." (lb.) 

Junius Brutus tries in vain to argue with him, but 
Coriolanus has no patience with him, a "triton of 
the minnows"; and the very fact that there should 
be tribunes appointed for the people disgusts him — 

" Five tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms, 
Of their own choice; one's Junius Brutus, 
Sicinus Velutus, and I know not — 'Sdeath! 
The rabble should have first unroofed the city, 
Ere so prevailed with me; it will in time 
Win upon power, and throw forth greater themes." 

And again: 

"The common file, a plague! — Tribunes for them!" 

(Act 1, Sc. 6.) 

Shakespeare took his material for the drama of 
" Coriolanus " from Plutarch's " Lives," and it is sig- 
nificant that he selected from that list of worthies the 
most conspicuous adversary of the commonalty that 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 1.53 

Rome produced. He presents him to us as a hero, 
and, so far as he can, enHsts our sympathy for him 
from beginning to end. When Menenius says of 
him: 

"His nature is too noble for the world," 

(Act 3, Sc. 1.) 
he is evidently but registering the verdict of the 
author, Plutarch's treatment of Coriolanus is far 
different. He exhibits his fine qualities, but he 
does not hesitate to speak of his "imperious temper 
and that savage manner which was too haughty for 
a republic," "Indeed," he adds, "there is no other 
advantage to be had from a liberal education equal 
to that of polishing and softening our nature by rea- 
son and discipline." He also tells us that Corio- 
lanus indulged his "irascible passions on a supposi- 
tion that they have something great and exalted in 
them," and that he wanted "a due mixture of grav- 
ity and mildness, w^hich are the chief political virtues 
and the fruits of reason and education." "He 
never dreamed that such obstinacy is rather the 
effect of the weakness and effeminacy of a distem- 
pered mind, which breaks out in violent passions 
like so many tumors." Nor apparently did Shake- 
speare ever dream of it either, altho he had Plutarch's 
sage observations before him. It is a pity that the 
great dramatist did not select from Plutarch's 
works some hero who took the side of the people, 
some Agis or Cleomenes, or, better yet, one of the 
Gracchi. What a tragedy he might have based on 
the hfe of Tiberius, the friend of the people and the 



154 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

martyr in their cause ! But the spirit which guided 
Schiller in the choice of William Tell for a hero was 
a stranger to Shakespeare's heart, and its promptings 
would have met with no response there. 

Even more striking is the treatment which the 
author of "Coriolanus" metes out to English history. 
All but two of his English historical dramas are de- 
voted to the War of the Roses and the incidental 
struggle over the French crown. The motive of 
this prolonged strife — so attractive to Shakespeare 
— had much the same dignity which distinguishes 
the family intrigues of the Sublime Porte, and 
Shakespeare presents the history of his country as a 
mere pageant of warring royalties and their trains. 
When the people are permitted to appear, as they 
do in Cade's rebellion, to which Shakespeare has 
assigned the character of the rising under Wat Tyler, 
they are made the subject of burlesque. Two of 
the popular party speak as follows : 

"John Holland. Well, I say, it was never merry world 
in England since gentlemen came up. 

George Bevis. O miserable age! Virtue is not regarded 
in handicraftsmen. 

John. The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons." 

When Jack Cade, alias Wat Tyler, comes on the 
scene, he shows himself to be a braggart and a fool. 
He says: 

"Be brave then, for your captain is brave and vows 
reformation. There shall be in England seven half-penny 
loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have 
ten hoops, and I will make it a felony to drmk small beer. 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 155 

All the realm shall be^in common, and in Cheapside shall 
my palfrey go to grass. And when I am king asking I 
will be — 

All. God save your majesty ! 

Cade. I thank you, good people — there shall be no 
money; all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will 
apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like 
brothers and worship me their lord." 

(Henry VI., Part 2, Act 4, Sc. 2.) 

The crowd wishes to kill the clerk of Chatham 
because he can read, write, and cast accounts. (Cade. 
" O monstrous ! ") Sir Humphrey Stafford calls them 

"Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent, 
Marked for the gallows." (lb.) 

Clifford succeeds without much difficutly in turn- 
ing the enmity of the mob against France, and Cade 
ejaculates disconsolately, "Was ever a feather so 
lightly blown to and fro as this multitude?" (lb., 
Act 4, Sc. 8.) In the stage directions of this scene, 
Shakespeare show s his ow n opinion of the mob by 
writing, "Enter Cade and his rabblement." One 
looks in vain here as in the Roman plays for a sug- 
gestion that poor people sometimes suffer wrong- 
fully from hunger and want, that they occasionally 
have just grievances, and that their efforts to pre- 
sent them, so far from being ludicrous, are the most 
serious parts of history, beside which the struttings 
of kings and courtiers sink into insignificance. 

One of the popular songs in Tyler's rebellion was 
the familiar couplet: 

"When Adam delved and Eve span. 
Who was then the gentleman?" 



156 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare refers to it in " Hamlet," where the 
grave-diggers speak as follows: 

"First Clown. Come, my spade. There is no ancient 
gentleman but gardnors, ditchers and grave-makers; they 
hold up Adam's profession. 

Second Clown. Was he a gentleman ? 

First Clown. He was tlie first that ever bore arms. 

Second Clown. W hy, he had none. 

First Clown. What, art a heathen ? How dost thou 
imderstand the Scripture ? The Scripture says, Adam 
digged; could he dig without arms?" (Act 5, Sc. 1.) 

That Shakespeare's caricature of Tyler's rebel- 
lion is a fair indication of his view of all popular 
risings appears from the remarks addressed by 
Westmoreland to the Archbishop of York in the 
Second Part of " Henry lY." (Act 4, Sc. 1). Says 
he: 

"If that rebellion 
Came like itself, in base and abject routs. 
Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags. 
And countenanced by boys and beggary; 
I say if danmed connnotion so appeared. 
In his true, native, and most proper shape, 
You, Reverend Father, and these noble lords 
Had not been here to dress the ugly form 
Of base and bloody insurrection 
With your fair honors." 

The first and last of Shakespeare's English his- 
torical plays, " King John " and " Henry YIIL," lie 
beyond the limits of the civil wars, and each of them 
treats of a period momentous in the annals of Eng- 
lish liberty, a fact which Shakespeare absolutely 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 157 

ignores. John as king had two great misfortunes 
— he sufFered disgrace at the hands of his barons 
and of the j)ope. The first event, the wringing of 
Magna C'harta from the king, Shakespeare passes 
over. A sense of national pride might have excused 
the omission of the latter humiliation, but no, it was 
a triumph of authority, and as such Shakespeare 
rrust record it for the edification of his hearers, and 
CO 'sequently we have the king presented on the stage 
as 1 leekly receiving the crown from the papal legate 
(Act 5, Sc. 1). England was freed from the Roman 
yoke m the reign of Henry VHI., and in the drama 
of that name Shakespeare might have balanced the 
indignity forced upon King John, but now he is 
silent. Nothing must be said against authority, 
even against that of the pope, and the play culmi- 
nates in the pomp and parade of the christening of 
the infant Elizabeth! Such is Shakespeare's con- 
ception of history! Who could guess from reading 
these English historical plays that throughout the 
period which they cover English freedom was grow- 
ing, that justice and the rights of man were assert- 
ing themselves, while despotism was gradually 
curbed and limited ? This is the one great glory of 
English history, exhibiting itself at Runnymede, re- 
flected in Wyclif and John Ball and Wat Tyler, and 
shining dimly in the birth of a national church under 
the eighth Henry. As Shakespeare wrote, it was 
preparing for a new and conspicuous outburst. 
When he died, Oliver Cromwell was already seven- 
teen years of age and John Hampden twenty-two. 



158 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

The spirit of Hampden was preeminently the Eng- 
Hsh spirit — the spirit which has given distinction to 
the Anglo-Saxon race — and he and Shakespeare 
were contemporaries, and yet of this spirit not a 
vestige is to be found in the English historical plays 
and no opportunities lost to obliterate or distort its 
manifestations. Only in Brutus and his fellow-con- 
spirators — of all Shakespearian characters — do we 
find the least consideration for liberty, and even then 
he makes the common, and perhaps in his time the 
unavoidable, mistake of overlooking the genuinely 
democratic leanings of Julius Caesar and the anti- 
popular character of the successful plot against him. 

It has in all ages been a pastime of noble minds 
to try to depict a perfect state of society. Forty 
years before Shakespeare's birth, Sir Thomas More 
published his " Utopia " to the world. Bacon in- 
tended to do the same thing in the " New Atlantis," 
but never completed the work, while Sir Philip Sid- 
ney gives us his dream in his " Arcadia." Mon- 
taigne makes a similar essay, and we quote from 
Florio's translation, published in 1603, the following 
passage (Montaigne's "Essays," Book I, Chapter 
30): 

"It is a nation, would I answer Plato, that hath 
no kind of traflSc, no knowledge of letters, no intelli- 
gence of numbers, no name of magistrate nor of 
political superiority; no use of service, of riches, or 
of poverty; no contracts, no succession, no divi- 
dences; no occupation, but idle; no respect of kin- 
dred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 159 

manuring of lands; no use of wine, corn, or metal. 
The very words that import lying, falsehood, trea- 
son, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, 
and pardon were never heard among them." 

We may readily infer that Shakespeare found 
little to sympathize with in this somewhat extravagant 
outline of a happy nation, but he goes out of his way 
to travesty it. In " The Tempest "he makes Gonzalo, 
the noblest character in the play, hold the following 
language to the inevitable king (Shakespeare can 
not imagine even a desert island without a king !) : 
"Had I plantation of this isle, my lord, 
I' th' commonwealth I would by contraries 
Execute all things ; for no kind of traffic 
Would I admit; no name of magistrate; 
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, 
And use of service, none; contract, succession, 
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; 
No use of metal, corn or wine or oil; 
No occupation; all men idle, — all. 
And women too, but innocent and pure; 

No sovereignty, 

Sebastian. Yet he would be king on't. 
Antonia. The latter end of his conmionwealth forgets 
the beginning. 

Gonzalo. All things in common. Nature should 
produce 
Without sweat or endeavor; treason, felony. 
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine, 
Would I not have; but Nature should bring forth 
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance. 
To feed my innocent people. 

Seb. No marrying 'mong his subjects.? 
Ant. None, man; all idle, whores, and knaves. 
Gon. I would with such perfection govern, sir. 
To 'xcel the golden age. 



160 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

Seb. 'Save his Majesty! 

Ant. Long live Gonzalo ! 

Gon, And do you mark me, sir ? 

King. Pr'ythee, no more ; thou dost talk nothing to me. 

Gon. I do well believe your Highness ; and did it to 
minister occasion to these gentlemen, who are of such 
sensible and nimble lungs that they always use to laugh 
at nothing. 

Ant. 'Twas you we laughed at. 

Gon. Who, in this kind of merry fooling, am nothing 
to you; so you may continue and laugh at nothing still." 
(Tempest, Act 2, Sc. 1.) 

That all things are not for the best in the best of 
all possible worlds would seem to result from the 
wise remarks made by the fishermen who enliven 
the scene in "Pericles, Prince of Tyre." They com- 
pare landlords to whales who swallow up every- 
thing, and suggest that the land be purged of "these 
drones that rob the bee of her honey"; and Pericles, 
so far from being shocked at such revolutionary and 
vulgar sentiments, is impressed by their weight, and 
speaks kindly of the humble philosophers, who in 
their turn are hospitable to the shipwrecked prince 
— all of which un-Shakespearian matter adds doubt 
to the authenticity of this drama (Act 2, Sc. 1). 

However keen the insight of Shakespeare may have 
been into the hearts of his high-born characters, he 
had no conception of the unity of the human race. 
For him the prince and the peasant were not of the 
same blood. 



For 

[, wh 

says King Simonides in " Pericles," and here at least 



prmces are 
A model, which heaven makes like to itself,' 



I 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 161 

we seem to see the hand of Shakespeare (Act 2, So. 
2). The two princes, Guiderius and Arviragus, 
brought up secretly in a cave, show their royal origin 
(Cymbeline, Act 3, Sc. 3), and the servants who see 
Coriolanus in disguise are struck by his noble figure 
(Coriolanus, Act 4, Sc. 5). Bastards are villains as 
a matter of course, witness Edmund in " Lear " and 
John in " Much Ado about Nothing," and no 
degree of contempt is too high for a 

"hedge-born swain 
That doth presume to boast of gentle blood." 

(Henry VI., Part 1, Act 4, Sc. 1.) 

Courage is only to be expected in the noble-born. 
The Duke of York says : 

"Let pale-faced fear keep with the mean-born man, 
And find no harbor in a royal heart." 

(Henry VI., Part 2, Act 3, Sc. 1.) 

In so far as the lower classes had any relation to 
the upper classes, it was one, thought Shakespeare, 
of dependence and obligation. It was not the tiller 
of the soil who fed the lord of the manor, but rather 
the lord who supported the peasant. Does not the 
king have to lie awake and take thought for his sub- 
jects ? Thus Henry V. complains that he can not 
sleep 

"so soundly as the wretched slave. 
Who with a body filled and vacant mind, 
Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread, 
Never sees horrid night, the child of Hell, 
But like a lackey, from the rise to set, 
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night 

Sleeps in Elysium 

11 



162 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

The slave, a member of the countrv's peace, 
Enjoys it, but in gross brain little wots 
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace, 
Whose hours the peasant best advantages." 

(Henry V., Act 4, Sc. 1.) 

And these lines occur at the end of a passage in 
which the king laments the "ceremony" that op- 
presses him and confesses that but for it he would 
be "but a man." He makes this admission, how- 
ever, in a moment of danger and depression. Henry 
IV. also invokes sleep (Part 2, Act 2, Sc. 1) : 

"O thou dull god! why liest thou with the vile 
In loathsome beds .5^" 

But plain people have to watch at times, and the 
French sentinel finds occasion to speak in the same 
strain : 

"Thus are poor servitors 
(When others sleep upon their quiet beds) 
Constrained to watch in darkness, rain, and cold." 
(Henry VI., Part 1, Act 2, Sc. 1.) 

Henry VI. is also attracted by the peasant's lot: 

"O God, methinks it were a happy life, 

To be no better than a homely swain 

The shepherd's homel}^ curds, 

His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, 
His wonted sleep imder a fresh tree's shade, 
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys, 
As far beyond a prince's delicates." 

(Henry VI., Part 3, Act 2, Sc. 5.) 

All of which is natural enough, but savors of cant 
in the mouths of men who fought long and hard to 
maintain themselves upon their thrones. 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 163 

We have already shown by references to the con- 
temporary drama that the plea of custom is not suf- 
ficient to explain Shakespeare's attitude to the lower 
classes, but if we widen our survey to the entire field 
of English letters in his day, we shall see that he was 
running counter to all the best traditions of our lit- 
erature. From the time of Piers Plowman down, 
the peasant had stood high with the great writers of 
poetry and prose alike. Chaucer's famous circle of 
story-tellers at the Tabard Inn in Southwark was 
eminently democra'ic. With the knight and the 
friar were gathered together 

"An haberdasher and a carpenter, 
A webbe, a deyer and tapiser," 

and the tales of the cook and the miller take rank 
with those of the squire and lawyer. The English 
Bible, too, was in Shakespeare's hands, and he must 
have been familiar with shepherd kings and fisher- 
men-apostles. In the very year in which " Hamlet " 
first appeared, a work was published in Spain which 
was at once translated into English, a work as well 
known to-day as Shakespeare's own writings. If 
the peasantry was anywhere to be neglected and 
despised, where should it be rather than in proud, 
aristocratic Spain, and yet, to place beside Shake- 
speare's Bottoms and Slys, Cervantes has given us 
the admirable Sancho Panza, and has spread his 
loving humor in equal measure over servant and 
master. Are we to believe that the yeomen of Eng- 
land, who beat back the Armada, were inferior to 



164 TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

the Spanish peasantry whom they overcame, or is it 
not rather true that the Spanish author had a deeper 
insight into his country's heart than was allotted to 
the English dramatist ? Cervantes, the soldier and 
adventurer, rose above the prejudices of his class, 
while Shakespeare never lifted his eyes beyond the 
narrow horizon of the Court to which he catered. 
It was love that opened Cervantes 's eye, and it is in 
all-embracing love that Shakespeare was deficient. 
As far as the common people were concerned, he 
never held the mirror up to nature. 

But the book of all others which might have sug- 
gested to Shakespeare that there was more in the 
claims of the lower classes than was dreamt of in his 
philosophy was More's "Utopia," which in its English 
form was already a classic. More, the richest and 
most powerful man in England after the king, not 
only believed in the workingman, but knew that he 
suffered from unjust social conditions. He could 
never have represented the down-trodden followers 
of Cade-Tyler nor the hungry mob in " Coriolanus" 
with the utter lack of sympathy which Shakespeare 
manifests. "What justice is there in this," asks the 
great Lord Chancellor, whose character stood the 
test of death — "what justice is there in this, that a 
nobleman, a goldsmith, a banker, or any other man, 
that either does nothing at all or at best is employed 
in things that are of no use to the public, should live 
in great luxury and splendor upon what is so ill ac- 
quired; and a mean man, a carter, a smith, a plow- 
man, that works harder even than the beasts them- 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 165 

selves, and is employed on labors so necessary that 
no commonwealth could hold out a year without 
them, can only earn so poor a livelihood, and must 
lead so miserable a life, that the condition of the 
beasts is much better than theirs?" 

How different from this is Shakespeare's concep- 
tion of the place of the workingman in society! 
After a full and candid survey of his plays. Bottom, 
the weaver with the ass's head, remains his type of 
the artizan and the "mutable, rank-scented many," 
his type of the masses. Is it unfair to take the mis- 
shapen "servant-monster" Caliban as his last word 
on the subject ? 

"Prospero. We'll visit Caliban my slave who never 
Yields us kind answer. ' 

Mirander. 'Tis a villain, sir, 

I do not love to look on. 

Prospero. But as 'tis, 

We can not miss him ! he does make our fire, 
Fetch in our wood, and serve in offices 
That profit us." (Tempest, Act 1, Sc. 2.) 

To which I would fain reply in the words of Ed- 
ward Carpenter: 

"Who art thou 

With thy faint sneer for him who wins thee bread 
And him who clothes thee, and for him who toils 
Day-long and night-long dark in the earth for thee ?" 



LETTER FROINI 
MR. G. BERNARD SHAW 

166 (Extracts) 

As you know, I have striven hard to open Eng- 
lish eyes to the emptiness of Shakespeare's philos- 
ophy, to the superficiality and second-handedness of 
his morality, to his weakness and incoherence as a 
thinker, to his snobbery, his vulgar prejudices, his 
ignorance, his disqualifications of all sorts for the 
philosophic eminence claimed for him. . . . The 
preface to my "Three Plays for Puritans" contains 
a section headed "Better than Shakespeare ? " which 
is, I think, the only utterance of mine on the subject 
to be found in a book. . . . There is at present in 
the press a new preface to an old novel of mine called 
"The Irrational Knot." In that preface I define 
the first order in Literature as consisting of those 
works in which the author, instead of accepting the 
current morality and religion ready-made without 
any question as to their validity, writes from an orig- 
inal moral standpoint of his own, thereby making 
his book an original contribution to morals, religion, 
and sociology, as well as to belles letters. I place 
Shakespeare with Dickens, Scott, Dumas pere, etc.. 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 167 

in the second order, because, tho they are enormously 
entertaining, their morahty is ready-made; and I 
point out that the one play, "Hamlet," in which 
Shakespeare made an attempt to give as a hero one 
who was dissatisfied with the ready-made morality, 
is the one which has given the highest impression of 
his genius, altho Hamlet's revolt is unskilfully and 
inconclusively suggested and not worked out with 
any philosophic competence.^ 

May I suggest that you should be careful not to 
imply that Tolstoy's great Shakespearian heresy 
has no other support than mine. The preface of 
Nicholas Rowe to his edition of Shakerpeare, and 
the various prefaces of Dr. Johnson contain, on 
Rowe's part, an apology for him as a writer with ob- 
vious and admitted shortcomings (very ridiculously 
ascribed by Rowe to his working by "a mere light 
of nature "), and, on Johnson's, a good deal of down- 
right hard-hitting criticism. You should also look 
up the history of the Ireland forgeries, unless, as is 
very probable, Tolstoy has anticipated you in this. 
Among nineteenth-century poets B}Ton and William 
Morris saw clearly that Shakespeare was enormously 
overrated intellectually. A French book, which has 
been translated into English, has appeared within 
the last ten years, giving Napoleon's opinions of the 
drama. His insistence on the superiority of Cor- 
neille to Shakespeare on the ground of Corneille's 

1 Besides the prefaces here referred to, Mr. G. Bernard 
Shaw has at various times written other articles on the 
subject.— (V. T.) 



168 tOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE 

power of grasping a political situation, and of seeing 
men in their relation to the state, is interesting. 

Of course you know about Voltaire's criticisms, 
which are the more noteworthy because Voltaire 
began with an extravagant admiration for Shake- 
speare, and got more and more bitter against him as 
he grew older and less disposed to accept artistic 
merit as a cover for philosophic deficiencies. 

Finally, I, for one, shall value Tolstoy's criticism 
all the more because it is the criticism of a foreigner 
who can not possibly be enchanted by the mere word- 
music which makes Shakespeare so irresistible in 
England.^ In Tolstoy's estimation, Shakespeare 
must fall or stand as a thinker, in which capacity I 
do not think he will stand a moment's examination 
from so tremendously keen a critic and religious 
realist. Unfortunately, the English worship their 
great artists quite indiscriminately and abjectly; so 
that it is quite impossible to make them understand 
that Shakespeare's extraordinary literary power, his 
fun, his mimicry, and the endearing qualities that 
earned him the title of "the gentle Shakespeare" — 
all of which, whatever Tolstoy may say, are quite 
unquestionable facts — do not stand or fall with his 
absurd reputation as a thinker. Tolstoy will cer- 
tainly treat that side of his reputation with the sever- 
ity it deserves; and you will find that the English 
press will instantly announce that Tolstoy considers 

* It should be borne in mind that this letter was written 
before Mr. G. B. Shaw had seen the essay in question, by 
Tolstoy, now published in this volume. — (V. T.) 



TOLSTOY ON SHAKESPEARE K9 

his own works greater than Shakespeare's (which in 
some respects they most certainly are, by the way), 
and that he has attempted to stigmatize our great- 
est poet as a Har, a thief, a forger, a murderer, an 
incendiary, a drunkard, a Hbertine, a fool, a mad- 
man, a coward, a vagabond, and even a man of ques- 
tionable gentility. You must not be surprised or 
indignant at this: it is what is called " dramatic crit- 
icism" in England and America. Only a few of 
the best of our journalist-critics will say anything 
worth reading on the subject. 

Yours faithfully, 

G. Bernard Shaw. 



" No one will perase a page without laying down the 
book a better and a wiser man.'^—Ihindee Courier. 

Tolstoy's Essays 
and Letters 

By LEO TOLSTOY 

Translated by Aylmer Maudb 

'^'HIS work contains twenty-six essays and letters 
Vl/ (many published for the first time) belonging to 
the last fifteen years of Tolstoy's career, the period in 
which he has devoted himself exclusively to himianitar- 
ian labors. Therefore each has a definite altruistic 
purpose. In the letters in particular we have, in the 
words of the translator, " Tolstoy's opinions in applica- 
tion to certain definite conditions. They thus help to 
bridge the gulf between theory and practise." 

HIGHLY COMMENDED 

" The subjects are varied, and present Tolstoy's well-known 
views in his always forceful manner." — The Outlook. 

"It contains the Russian philosopher and philanthropist's 
best thought, and furnishes coneiderable insight into his 
wonderful personality."— TAe Mirror^ St. Louis. 

" For those who wish to be well instructed in Tolstoyana 
this handy little book will be invaluable. ''^—BrooUyii Eagle. 

"These essays form an admirable introduction to Tolstoy's 
philosophy."— If es^er^i Daily Mercury, Plymouth, Eng. 

12xno, Cloth, 372 pp. Price, $1.00, post-paid 

FUNK e WAGNALLS COMPANY. PubUshew 
NEW YORK and LONDON 



Tolstoy's Plays 

Also Annotated List of Works 



^T'HIS volume, a new translation by Louise and Aylmer 
^^ Maude, contains Tolstoy's three great plays, together 
with the Russian folk-tale of which one of them is the 
dramatized version. It also includes a complete annotated 
and chronological list of Tolstoy's works of special helpful- 
ness to all readers and students of the great Russian writer. 

LIST OF THE PLAYS 

The Power of Darkness ; or, If a Claw is Caught the Bird is 

Lost — A drama in five acts. 
The First Distiller— A comedy in six acts. 
Fruits of Culture— A comedy in four acts. 

INCLUDING ALSO 

The Imp and the Crust— This is a Russian folk-tale, of which 

"The First Distiller " is the dramatized version. 

Their High Literary and Dramatic Value 

To their literary merit Tolstoy's plays add the quality of be- 
Ing excellent acting dramas, as their success both in Russia 
and elsewhere has abundantly shown. Mr. Laurence Irving 
lately wrote : " I suppose England is the only country in Europe 
where ' The Power of Darkness ' has not been acted. It ought 
to be done. It is a stupendous tragedy ; the effect on the stage 
is unparalleled." 

Their Wide Range of Sentiment 

"Between Tolstoy's two great plays," says the translator, 
" • The Power of Darkness ' and ' The Fruits of Culture,' the 
contrast is very striking. The first is intensely moral, terrible 
In h,8 earnestness and force. . . . Very different is 'Fruits of 
Culture,' a play brimful of laughter and merriment." 

Handsomely printed on deckle-edge paper, gilt-top, half- 
tone frontispiece, showing Anisya and Nikita in " The 
Power of Darkness," cover design in gold, extra-quality 
ribbed olive cloth, 250 -fxii pages. Price $1.50, post-paid. 

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 

New York PUBUSHERS London 



A CLEAR AND HOPEFUL EXPOSITION 
OF TOLSTOY'S TEACHINGS 

" students of the master will find this little book indispen- 
sable." — San Francisco News-Letter. 

Tolsfoy and 
His Problems 

Essays by AYLMER MAUDE 

"If^ACH essay in this volume expresses, in one form 
>W or other, Tolstoy's views of life ; and the main 
object of the book is not to praise his views, but to 
explain them. Being the only Englishman who in 
recent years has had the advantage of intimate per- 
sonal intercourse, continued over a period of some 
years, with Tolstoy, Mr. Maude is well quaUfied for 
his present work. 

CONTENTS 



Biography of Tolstoy 

Tolstoy's Teachings 

An Introduction to " What 

Is Art?" 
How " Resurrection " Was 

Written 



Introduction to " The Sla- 
very of Our Times " 
The Tsar's Coronation 
Right and Wrong 
War and Patriotism 
Talks With Tolstoy 



" Any one who takes up this delightful series of essays will 
not willingly lay it down without at least the determination 
to finish iV —Bii,tish Friend. 

"Mr. Maude's long and intimate acquaintance with Tol- 
stoy enables him to speak with knowledge probably not 
^ by any other Englishman,"— J/o/v/zh^' Post. 

12mo, Cloth, 220 pages. Price, $1.00 



FU NK^ WAGNALLS COMPANY. Publishers 
NEW YORK and LONDON 



Sevastopol 

AND OTHER MILITARY TALES 

By LEO TOLSTOY 

HNEW translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude, 
specially approved by the author. This book 
relates the author's own experiences, sensations, and 
reflections during the most noted siege of modern his- 
tory. The translation has been authorized by Count 
Tolstoy, who has specially commended it for its accu- 
racy, simplicity, and directness. 

" No other modern book approaches ' Sevastopol ' in the 
completeness and directness with which it unveils the reali- 
ties of war. There are picturesque glimpses in Mr. Kipling's 
vulgar stories of fighting. But the strongest meat Mr. Kip- 
ling can provide is milk for bahes beside Count Tolstoy's 
seemingly casual sketches, which yet comprehend with 
merciless amplitude the whole atmosphere of war.''— The 
Morning Leadei\ London. 

Wliat Count Tolstoy Says of the Translators 
and Translation 

"Better translators, both for knowledge of the two lan- 
guages and for penetration into the very meaning of the 
matter translated, could not be invented." Of their transla- 
tion of Sevastopol, Tolstoy also says: "I think I already 
wrote you how unusually the first volume of your edition 
pleases me. All in it is excellent: the edition and the remarks, 
and chiefly the translation, and yet more the conscientious- 
ness with which all tliis has been done." 

Handsomely printed on deckle-edge paper, 
gilt top, photogravure portrait of Tolstoy 
from a daguerreotype taken in 1855, map of 
Sevastopol; cover design in gold, extra-qual- 
ity rihtoed olive cloth, 325 + xlviii. pp. $1.50. 
{This hook is not for sale by vs in Great Bintain.) 

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers 
NEW YORK and LONDON 



Three New Stories by Count Leo Tolstoy, Written for 
the Benefit of the Kishinef Sufferers. 'Publisher's and 
Jluthor's Profits are to go to the Kishinef Relief Fund 

ESARHADDON 

King of Assyria, and Other Stories 

By COUNT LEO TOLSTOY 

Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, with an Introduction 
Containing Letters by Tolstoy 

Esarhaddon, King of Assyria. An allegorical story with an 
Oriental setting, telling how a cruel king was made to feel 
and understand the sufferings of one of his captives, and to 
repent his own cruelty. 

Work, Death, and Sickness. A legend accredited to the 
South American Indians, showing the three means God took 
to make men more kind and brotherly toward each other. 
Three Questions. A quaint folk-lore tale answering the 
three questions of life: " What is the Best Time? " " Who 
Are the Most Important Persons? " " What Thing Should 
be Done First? " 

OPINION OF THE PRESS 

St. Louis Globe-Democrat : " Count Tolstoy is a man so sure of his 
message and so clear about it that he always finds something worth 
while to say. . . . There is a quality in the little tales published under 
the title ' Esarhaddon ' which is quickly suggestive of certain Biblical 
narratives. There is one called ' Three Questions,' which contains, in 
half a dozen pages, an entire philosophy of life, and it is presented in 
such apt pictures and ideas that its meaning is not to be overlooked. It 
would be hard to suggest anything that could be read in five minutes 
that would impart so much to think about. 'Esarhaddon,' the sketch 
from which the volume takes its name, is of the same character, and 
the third tale, ' Work, Death, and Sickness,' is full of very fine thought. 
There is, perhaps, no writer working to-day whose mind is centered on 
bi-oader and better things than the Russian master, and the present 
«fEering shows him at his very best." 

"Hour-Glass Stories." Dainty 12mo. Cloth, Frontis- 
piece, Ornamental Cover, 40 cents, Postpaid 

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY. Publishers 
NEW YORK and LONDON 



^c^^ 

-^% 



What Is Art? 

Translated from the Original Manuscript, with 
an Introduction by AYLMER MAUDE 

HRT is a human activity, declares Tolstoy, The ob- 
ject of this activity is to transmit to others feelings 
the artist has experienced. By certain external signs — 
movements, lines, colors, sounds or arrangements of 
words — an artist infects other people so that they share 
his feelings; thus, " art is a means of union among men, 
joining them together in the same feelings." Without 
adequate expression there is no art, for there is no infec- 
tion, no transference to others of the author's feeling. 
The test of art is infection. If an author has moved you 
so that you feel as he felt, if you are so united to him in 
feeling that it seems to you that he has expressed just 
what you have long wished to express, the work that has 
so infected you is a work of art. 

A POWERFUL WORK FULL OF 
GENIUS AND ORIGINALITY 

"The powerful personality of the author, the startling orig- 
inality of his views, grip the reader and carry him, though 
his deepest convictions be outraged, protesting through the 
book."— Pa^^ Mali Gazette. 

" The discussion is bound to shake the whole world to its 
very center, and to result in a considerable readjustment of 
theories.''''— PUtsbmy Times. 

"It is the ablest and most scholarly writing of a great 
thinker.'''— Chicago Inter Ocean. 

" No recent book on the subject is so novel, so readable, or 
so questionable."— .Vee^; York Times Saturday Bevieio. 

Small 12m.o, Cloth, 268 pp. 80 cts., postpaid 

FUNK {a WAGNALLS COMPANY. Publishers 
NEW YORK and LONDON 



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